


I Should Live in Salt

by LastAmericanMermaid



Category: Black Sails, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Heartache, Hurt/Comfort, I'm so bad at tagging, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, There Will Be Pain & Angst, Timelines, Treasure Island from Silver's POV, Treasure Island retelling, and adventure!, author has attempted to fuse non-canon Black Sails with Treasure Island, with glimpses into his past with Flint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 13:19:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 46,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6080856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastAmericanMermaid/pseuds/LastAmericanMermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The events of Treasure Island from the perspective of John Silver. </p><p>Taking the events (so far) of Black Sails, adding in a whole lot of my own head canon, and jumping back and forth between the past and present. </p><p>What if Long John Silver was angry at a ghost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> I'm nuts. 
> 
> I must be, attempting this. 
> 
> This first chapter is sort of me testing the waters, so please leave me feedback if you read. In its entirety, Treasure Island is 34 chapters long. I am going to try my damnedest to manage the same, averaging two updates per week as long as I am able. 
> 
> Well, here it goes. *dives off cliff*

0.

  
John Silver woke to the maddening ache coursing through the left leg he no longer had.

He lay there with his eyes shut, listening to the gentle sounds of his wife slumbering next to him, but it was no use; when these pains came upon him, all Silver could do was wait them out. He could dig his fingers sharply into the scarred flesh of the stump that remained, but he’d never quite been able to do it as well as—

“No, goddamn it,” Silver hissed, struggling to push himself into an upright position.

His wife shifted beside him but did not wake, a heavy sleeper as long as he’d known her.

It was never a good thing when Silver’s mind wandered to certain places in the strange, sidelong hours that dwelled in the space after midnight but before sunrise.

The fact that he still kept returning to those well-traveled places in his memory was irritating. It had been a long time—near on twenty years—since all of that business with Nassau, with the pirates and the bloodshed and that blasted gold.

Silver groped about in the bluish darkness until he found his crutch, gripping it tight as he swung his good leg over the side of the bed to stand.

The thump of the crutch against the floorboards was as quiet as he could make it, but again, Silver didn’t need to worry about waking his sleeping wife.

He made his way down the narrow hall and to the door which let out into the garden he pretended to hate. The moon was full and low-hanging in the sky, ripe and luminous and casting its eerie light down on everything.

Silver lowered himself carefully onto the wooden bench just next to the door and glared balefully up at the moon.

The air was humid but pleasant, like being swallowed up by tepid bathwater, and the various bright-feathered birds would likely soon begin their dawn chorus of trills and echoing chirps. Though he’d often complained of the noise, truthfully Silver found the noise comforting, as he was often awake long before it began, with only the unruly sounds of his own mind for company.

He sat on that bench muttering low oaths under his breath and not blinking, dead-eyeing the moon as if it were the very man he cursed. He’d likely have kept on—if only to distract himself from the pain of his missing leg—but the light pad of footsteps broke Silver’s trance.

Turning to see over his shoulder whom he’d woken with his insomnia, Silver’s gaze fell upon his only daughter.

“Natália Maria da Graça, go back to bed,” he sighed, and to his own ears he sounded so…resigned.

Of course, being her mother’s child, Natty did no such thing. Instead, she came over to the bench and sat down beside Silver, fixing him with a knowing look.

“You’re getting worse,” she said matter-of-factly, undoing the stretch of colorful fabric she kept her hair wrapped in while she slept. Her braids tumbled out, the polished beads and shells tied to the ends clacking softly.

Silver sighed again, stretching out his good leg and leaning back against the bench.

“It’s nothing,” he lied—quite badly, too; his younger self would be appalled—twisting his arm just to feel the joints crack. “Just old ails causing trouble. Don’t worry yourself.”

He glanced at his daughter to see if she believed him—he needn’t have bothered; she was staring flatly back at him, her odd-colored eyes lit up by the moon’s glow. Sometimes it hurt Silver, made his chest squeeze and his ribs feel too tight, when he looked at his beautiful daughter and saw that she was nearly grown.

She was just seventeen, but already she walked with authority and set her jaw in defiance, as if daring anyone to challenge her on any subject.

“You’ve barely slept, _pai_. You look like you have a ghost with you.”

And it struck Silver suddenly, under the sharp eye of his clever daughter, that he was being haunted. It was almost worse, he thought, being tormented by one’s own memories, than any torture dreamt up by human men.

“I’ve got a ghost, alright,” Silver muttered lowly “and his name is James bloody Flint.”

“Who?” Natty sat up a little straighter, leaning in with interest. “Flint, like the bird?”

Said bird was sleeping on her perch in the kitchen currently, called Captain Flint out of some tragic combination of maudlin sentiment and childish spite. Silver pinched the bridge of his nose and scrunched his eyes shut for several seconds.

The dawn chorus was picking up, just two birds calling and responding to one another for now. In an hour or so, the sun would peek violet and pink over the horizon.

“Just a man I used to know,” Silver replied finally, pushing his fingertips into his scarred stump. “A more apt way to put it would be to say that he was a man who knew me.”

It was hard not to sound bitter—hell, Silver felt that bitterness so strongly he could taste it whenever he thought of Flint—but hearing it in his own voice came as a mild shock.

Natty put her hand over Silver’s where it lay between them on the bench, so much compassion in her face that it was hard to look at.

For all that she looked like her mother, Madi, Silver was often surprised to see that it was his own features he saw in her when he studied his daughter’s face.

He wondered idly if she knew instinctively how to use expressions to manipulate people, the way he had.

“I confess, this is not the first time I have heard that name, ‘Flint,’” Natty said slowly, her eyes never leaving Silver’s, “but all _muma_ will ever say is that it is not her story to tell. Will you tell me?”

Breathing hard through his nose, Silver closed his eyes again, turning his hand palm-up so he could squeeze his daughter’s fingers.

“One day, my pearl, I promise you.” he answered finally, so exhausted in both mind and body that he found sleep creeping up to take him. “I’ll tell you the whole cursed thing, I expect, but not now.”

Natty made a clucking sound with her tongue.

“You need to go and lie down, _pai_. There are still a few hours yet before things need doing.”

“Be a love and help your ragged old father to stand, eh?” Silver asked, grinning faintly.

Natty rolled her eyes, but did as she was asked, and together with Silver’s crutch between them, they made their way back inside the cottage.

When Silver crawled back into bed, Madi rolled over onto her back, dark eyes glittering.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” Silver said softly, reaching to brush his thumb across her smooth, dark cheek.

All his wife said was, “you need to tell her, John. You can’t keep it locked in a chest and buried twenty leagues forever.”

Then, she turned over onto her side, facing away from him and taking his arm with her to wrap around her waist.  
  
Silver fitted his body against Madi’s, breathed in the comforting scent of her neck, and drifted back into sleep plagued by his own personal ghost.

. . .

_Past_

  
“I can’t let you continue down this path,” Silver said, folding his arms over his chest and feeling frustrated and desperate.

“You can’t _let_ me?” Flint scoffed, reaching for the bottle of rum to pour himself another full cup. “I’m sorry, did I miss something? Was I unaware of some claim that John Silver holds over my own personal choices?”

They were three days into the journey to the remote isle Flint had chosen as the place to hide his hoard, and the captain had been drunk for nearly two of those days.

The rum had surprised Silver at first—he’d never seen Flint drink more than a finger or two once in a blue moon—but soon that surprise turned to worry. When he was in this intoxicated state, Flint was clumsy and angry—a poor combination. What’s more, he was prone to dark moods increasingly often, and nothing and no one could pull him out.

Not even Silver.

He tried to ignore the nagging hunch that this might be all—or at least partly—his own fault. It was not long after Silver’s marriage to the quick-witted, handsome daughter of the Maroons’ king and queen that Flint had stopped confiding in Silver and instead begun favoring the bottle.

 

They had barely spoken about it, about the thing between them, and so Silver had always felt in his heart that Flint mattered more to him than he to Flint. It was confusing, and stressful. He never could tell where he stood with Flint, and so when the beautiful, fierce princess had begun to return Silver’s interested glances, Silver saw his chance and took it.

It had never been explicitly stated, but had always felt clearly implied; no one could fill the gaping, ragged space that Thomas and Miranda Hamilton had left in James Flint’s heart. (Of course Flint had told Silver about all of that, one night in a cheap inn room several months after they’d started fucking.) So, Silver had thought, why hope for more?

But then, when he had told Flint of his plans to court Madi, Silver had been met with a different reaction than he’d expected.

Flint had seemed…stung, almost. For several seconds, he looked split apart, and Silver was afraid he’d made a grave mistake. Then, Flint’s expression had slackened into that infuriating, impenetrable neutral mask, and he’d offered Silver his congratulations.

That was it, no further discussion had.

Silver felt robbed, somehow. He wanted an argument, a physical fight, _some_ thing; instead, all he got was shut out by the only person he had let in.

After that, the bitterness and the distance between them only grew.

 

Now, Silver was facing down a version of James Flint that he’d never have believed could exist: sloppy, slurring his words, and losing control of himself.

“I have never pretended to hold any claim to any part of you, James.” Silver said, uncrossing his arms so he could ball his fists against the sides of his thighs. His knuckles were white with the effort of trying to remain calm.

“No?” Flint raised his eyebrows and gazed blearily up at Silver. “You never once thought yourself to be my keeper? Forgive me, but am I to believe that there was some draw for you in our—our _liaisons_ , other than gaining the upper hand over me?”

“Are you really so oblivious?” Silver shouted, taking several steps closer to Flint’s desk. “What ‘upper hand’ could I possibly have ever had in this, with you? It’s as absurd a notion as that of a dog having the the advantage over his master,” he said sourly “and about as likely.”

Flint said nothing then, just stared at Silver as if seeing him for the first time, inebriated haze and all.

Silver was breathing hard, and his whole body was trembling with the force of his words, and from the effort of holding back. He wanted to shout until his lungs rasped, wanted to shake Flint by his dirty collar and demand to know everything inside the man’s head.

After several tense moments had passed, Flint rose to stand on steadier feet than Silver would have expected. His eyes held sorrow—and more than that, they held pain, and regret.

It wasn’t that Silver hadn’t seen these things in Flint’s eyes before; he’d just never seen it and had the knowledge that it was for him. That weight settled, heavy and surreal over Silver’s consciousness.

“We should never have started,” Flint said quietly, his voice rough “I saw it then, and said nothing. That was…selfish of me.”

Silver couldn’t help feeling confused, and it must have shown on his face, because Flint came round the desk so he was standing with just a few feet between them.

“I knew it would cause you pain in the end, but I thought I could delay it,” he continued, and the aching sadness in his eyes was almost too much for Silver. “And now, here we are.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Silver rasped, wondering how the hell they got here.

Flint moved just a few steps nearer, and Silver had to wrestle with the instinct to be pulled to him like the tide.

“I don’t know,” Flint admitted, and he sounded, in that moment, so lost.

“I can’t watch you drink yourself to death, James.” Silver said softly, finally speaking the truth of it aloud. He hadn’t meant to use Flint’s first name, but the effect it had was noticeable.

“When you call me ‘James,’ it makes me believe for a moment that I am more than this,” Flint held his hands out at his sides, palms raised in supplication “this _thing_ I have become.”

Silver thought, fleetingly, of the strong, beautiful woman who waited for him back at Nassau. He looked at the man before him, weathered and haunted and still half-drunk.

He offered up a silent prayer, asking forgiveness for this next sin to be added to what was likely a mountain’s worth.

Then, he closed the space between them, pulling Flint to him in a rough embrace.

“You are not the sort of man that one can purge from themselves,” Silver breathed into Flint’s shoulder. “You’re in my blood, and goddamn you for it.”

Flint’s hands came up to rest on the small of Silver’s back, and when the moment in which he should pull away came and went, Silver was resigned to it.

“Will you stay here tonight, with me?” Flint asked, in a voice too small for Silver’s liking. He was not used to this from Flint, to seeing these vulnerable, soft insides.

“You know that I will.” Silver replied, unsure whether he hated himself more for giving in, or for not caring that he was giving in.

Flint pulled back just enough so that he could rest his forehead against Silver’s.

“I am sorry, John.” he said, and then kissed him.

Silver let himself be kissed, and soon lost himself in the exchange. It had been months since they were like this last, and Silver had not realized how much he missed it. He hadn’t known that having it again would feel like finally surfacing and drawing breath after fearing he’d drown.

 

Later, he fell asleep with Flint’s head on his chest and a heavy feeling in his bones, in his soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. 
> 
> Okay. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought about it! I know I'm one chapter away from my little 5 chapter SilverFlint fic being done, but this idea was nagging at me so bad.
> 
>  
> 
> *Also, 'pai' is Portuguese for father, and 'muma' is the word for mother in several Caribbean languages-- or so the internet has told me. 
> 
> **in my other fic, I decided that Silver's mother was Portuguese, hence 'pai'.
> 
> *** A WONDERFUL PERSON WHO IS PORTUGUESE HAS VOLUNTEERED TO BE MY HELP FOR ALL THIS STUFF! They have informed me that Natália is only common in Brazilian Portuguese eep but we have agreed it is too late to change it. That said, I have added 'da' between Maria and Graça to make it more culturally authentic. I'm so happy to have someone to point out these things to me!


	2. Billy Bones

 

I.

  
Silver was taking stock of goods in the little store he and Madi had set up, when the gangly, roughneck young man he’d recruited for certain purposes came barging through the door.

“Bones is dead,” the man said, and Silver felt a small tremor of relief go through himself.

Benjamin Wickham, or ‘Black Dog’ as he insisted upon being called, looked very pleased with himself. Silver resented that smugness, but the news Black Dog had brought with him was enough so that he could overlook it, for now.

“How?” he asked, thinking of the last time he’d seen Billy Bones.

Bones was a huge man, stacked with hard muscle and tall enough to need to duck through door frames; it was hard to imagine a version of Billy that was weak in any way. He’d been…changed, though, the last time Silver and he had crossed paths. It had been the result of drink-madness, and that mixed with the guilt Billy’d felt over his part in what happened made for a very different man than the one Silver’d known him as.

“‘E died of drink, sir. Drink and fear, I reckon,” Black Dog grinned, revealing yellowish teeth.

Silver pinched the bridge of his nose, already exasperated with the young man in his employ, when Natty came through from the back door, finished going over the storerooms.

“You again,” she cut her eyes at Black Dog, whom she had a good deal of distaste for “will you be buying anything, or just effectively warding off any hope of other customers with your presence?”

Black Dog made a face, but he knew better than to say anything foolish to Natty, especially when Silver was present.

(Not that Natty Silver couldn’t hold her own. If her sharp tongue didn’t cut a man to ribbons, she’d a knife at her belt that was quick and sure enough in her hand to finish the job.)

Silver sighed, remembering wearily the plan, and that he himself had orchestrated it. It had seemed, one night in a very low place of anger and resentment, to be a very good idea to seek out Flint’s hoard on that secret isle.

Silver realized, in the light of day, that it hadn’t been a very good plan, but by then it was too late to stop what he had set in motion.

“Where was it?” he asked Black Dog suddenly, the wheels in his mind beginning to turn “where did Billy die?”

The young man jerked his head in the direction of the main road outside.

“Some inn at Port Royal,” Black Dog answered “ _Admiral_ _Benbow_ , that’s what it were.”

Silver hadn’t heard of the place, but that wasn’t surprising; he rarely made trips anywhere anymore. The sea was too wide and full of unhappy memories.

“And did you retrieve the papers like I asked?” Silver was keenly aware of his daughter listening and watching this exchange intently. He only prayed that Black Dog—and what an idiotic name that was, Silver hated calling him by it—would keep mum on the details.

Black Dog looked away shiftily, and Silver knew before the man spoke what his answer would be.

“Not as such, no,” Black Dog mumbled “someone’d already been through Bones’ chest, some whelp what owns the inn. Ol’ Pew was trampled by horses in the fray.”

No big loss there, thought Silver, recalling the old blind pirate's rambling diatribes and foul personage. But without the maps and charts that Billy’d kept with him until his final moments, there was no way to find the deserted isle where the entirety of Flint’s haul was buried.

“Please tell me you weren’t outwitted by a child,” Silver said through gritted teeth. “I have no use for someone who can be bested by some cow-eyed little shit.”

Black Dog looked annoyed, but he hesitated to challenge Silver on the subject. Instead, he handed over a crumpled bit of paper.

“This here’s all I know, my hand to God. Some posh doctor an’ a few others are rounding up a crew to make a voyage for the island.” Black Dog said, then smiled hideously. “As it happens, they’ll be needin’ a cook for the journey.”

Silver almost grinned, exhausted though he was with the whole business; a long time ago, in what felt like some other life, he’d pretended to be a cook. He supposed he might have it in him to do it one last time. It was, in a way, like things coming full circle.

“See what else you can find out,” he told Black Dog, who nodded and then went on his way, leaving Silver to contend with his daughter.

“You’re planning something,” she said with certainty, crossing her arms over her chest and raising one eyebrow. “You’re planning some mischief, and don’t try to deny it. I only wonder if _muma_ knows about it.”

Madi was aware that Silver had plans to retrieve Flint’s gold. She’d snorted and said that perhaps it would bring him some peace, so he could be done with all the grief and blaming himself. That, and she remarked that a large amount of gold would certainly not be unwelcome.

“Your mother knows everything about me, Natty, and you may lay to that. Rest easy that it isn’t mischief, just business.”

Natty looked unconvinced. She raised her chin slightly, the spitting image of Madi.

“Just business? _Muma_ always says how cunning you were in your youth, but I’m afraid I don’t see it. The truth, _pai_. Please.”

Silver was so tired. He looked at his daughter and wondered how he’d managed to have any part in creating something so incredible as the woman she had become.

“It has to do with my past,” he said finally, leaning to rest his forearms on the counter in front of him. “It has to do with Flint, the _Walrus_ , pirates—the whole bloody mess.”

“You’re going to leave,” Natty said slowly, realization dawning over her features “I’m coming with you.”

“Absolutely not,” Silver couldn’t suppress the sick feeling in his stomach at the thought of his only child being a part of what he had planned. “I’ll be gone for a short while, then home again. You are most definitely not coming with.”

Natty set her jaw and stared at Silver coolly.

“We’ll see,” she replied, then went back into the storerooms.

“There’s no way in hell she’s coming,” Silver said aloud to the empty shop.

 

Natty was right; he had become a poor liar.

. . .

 

_Past_

When Silver had first begun to feel a sort of pull from Flint, he hadn’t known exactly what to make of it.

He’d never been so drawn to another person—especially not one who might kill him at any given moment—and the feeling unsettled him greatly.

At first, it had been about the _Urca_ gold, nothing else. At some moment, a moment Silver could not for the life of him pinpoint, things had changed. The lines between himself and Flint, clear-drawn and ramrod straight, had begun to blur and shift.

Silver desperately wanted inside of James Flint’s head, he realized to his own horror. He wanted to know what had made Flint into the man he was, what motivated the blood-soaked rage that seemed to push Flint through his every waking moment.

And then, of course, there were the looks.

Every so often, Silver would catch Flint staring at him from across whatever space they both currently occupied, as though he were trying to puzzle Silver out somehow. It was disturbing, but more than that, it was hypnotic.

It drew Silver in, that searching gaze, that furrowed brow; he began to watch Flint in a wholly different way than he had before. It wasn’t merely keeping an eye on a person who could at any moment turn on him, it was studying Flint’s every move. Drinking him in.

Silver ought to have known that no good would come of looking; looking so often led to wanting, and wanting had never taken any man down any righteous path.

Still, he looked.

All the while, he told himself it was practical, that it was just too good a riddle to pass up trying to solve. He knew, of course, where his thoughts were beginning to lead, that it was a dangerous place at which his mind was toeing the line.

Every survival instinct, every ounce of self-preservation Silver had screamed in his ear to take his share of the gold and disappear.

Not long after, he was lying on a table, shaking and sweating and nearly unconscious with the pain as Mr. Howell hacked off what mangled flesh and bone remained of his left leg.

And then, a few months later, Flint had acted on all those long, intense looks. It was fierce and heated, a struggle for power which left both men panting and bruised and sated. That was the first time, Silver would always remember, that he saw the captain undone.

  
Silver kept on ignoring his practical mind after that; it was an easy thing to do when one was in thrall to James Flint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoooooops, I know I am promising Wednesday and Sunday updates, but I just wanted to post a little bit more. 
> 
> I'm so thrilled that a few people have already commented and given me some feedback! I would love to hear from anyone! <3 
> 
>  
> 
> ALSO, some important notes: in Treasure Island, Silver lives somewhere in England, as does Jim Hawkins; that said, I've decided to change that, because the whole setting of Treasure Island really demanded to be tropical and it wasn't, and yeah basically that's it. I decided to put the Admiral Benbow in Port Royal, Jamaica instead of near Bristol where it's supposed to be. 
> 
> ALSO, I'm probably going to be bringing Natty along. And there's a good chance I'll be making Jim Hawkins a little older than 13. There's a pretty decent young adult novel where Long John Silver's daughter and Jim Hawkins' son team up for an adventure, but hey what if they just did it now, in my version of Treasure Island. WOOO, artistic license! 
> 
> <3


	3. Outvoted

II.

Silver looked at the scrap of paper Black Dog had given him. On it was a scrawled list of names; Livesy, Trelawney, Smollett, Redruth, Joyce, Hunter, and a list of positions in a small crew what needed filling. There was a ship listed, a 200-tonne schooner called the _Hispaniola_ , and a date at which time the sponsors of the voyage hoped to set sail.

Silver knew he had to offer his services as cook, and soon. The _Hispaniola_ would be departing from Port Royal in a month’s time.

He had not been at sea in many years, not in any proper way, at least. Not since what had happened with Flint and the _Walrus_. It rattled him, thinking about going back out on open water again now, as a man of fifty with a home and family to return to.

It had never mattered before—not to anyone other than John Silver himself, anyhow—whether or not he came back from each sea journey he made with whichever merchant ship. Until, of course, he had happened to stumble onto the _Walrus_ all those years ago. That had certainly changed things.

Silver shook his head and ran a hand over his face. This was a fool’s errand, and he knew it. That did not stop him from wanting to see it through to completion.

The gold was laying there, protected only by Flint’s ghost, the skeletons of the men he’d killed, and the fact that the isle was uncharted. The gold, which was supposed to be what Silver was going there to retrieve.

But there was something else.

That deep blue coat half-buried in the back of a wardrobe in Silver’s cottage, so dark in color as to be almost black. The one with fine lacing and real brass buttons.

It made Silver’s throat ache to think of that coat, to think about unpacking it and shrugging it over his shoulders the way its previous owner had done.

He wondered if it would still smell of the man who wore it for so long.

He hoped not.

If it did, it would be that much harder for Silver to leave it on that island.

. .

“ _Muma_ , tell _pai_  he can’t go on this ridiculous mission alone,” Natty said in a deceptively conversational tone, chopping fruits for chutney while Silver shook spices into the bubbling pot on the stove.

Silver didn’t know whether to curse or praise the fact that his daughter had clearly inherited his gift for speaking to sway others to a cause.

Madi, who was seated at the little wooden table, feeding bits of sweet, pulpy fruit to that damned parrot, looked amused.

“And I suppose you think _you_ should go with him?” Madi quirked a brow at Natty, who kept on slicing the papayas, trying to keep a straight face.

“Well, who else will make sure he doesn’t go toppling over the side when the seas get rough?” Natty answered, grinning outright at the fruit in front of her.

“I’m standing right here, you know,” Silver interjected, feeling ganged up on for possibly the millionth time since Natty had begun to walk and talk. “I’m not some doddering old man. Not yet, anyways.”

“Of course not, my love.” Madi said, though she was cooing at the bird perched on her shoulder rather than at Silver.

Silver rolled his eyes.

“I’m going to be outvoted, aren’t I?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Our daughter has a point, John.” Madi said, and fixed him with one of her looks. “I would feel safer knowing that you had someone with you who is on your side, not just the side of whoever has the gold.”

Those words rung with the bitterest sort of irony in Silver’s head.

He remembered quite well how he had made it explicitly clear to Flint at the beginning that he was only on Flint’s side because of his ability to procure that gold. He hadn’t been truly on Flint’s side—James Flint the actual man, not merely the captain—until the moment he’d refused to give up the rest of the crew to Charles Vane’s insane quartermaster.

“But wouldn’t you worry about Natty, among all those English sailors, way out at sea?” Silver knew very well, thank you, that he was grasping, and could have done well without the withering looks both his wife and daughter cast at him.

“But you would be there,” Madi countered, offering that damned bird a bit of soursop pulp.

The bird piped up with that favorite chant of hers, “pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

“Damn and blast that godforsaken bird, and curse the day I brought it home,” Silver groaned, moving to throw himself haphazardly into a chair at the table.

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,” the bird begun to squawk in what Silver imagined to be a very smug manner.

“Where is that bottle of rum?” Silver muttered, not much meaning it. He didn’t like to touch the stuff, not even when his leg pained him most. He told himself plenty of lies as to the reason he avoided drink, but really, it just made him think black thoughts about the man who’d fallen to it.

“You’re away in your own head again, _pai_ ,” Natty’s voice brought Silver back into the present, to their little kitchen with hanging herbs over the stove, and palm trees visible just outside the window.

“I’m sorry, my pearl. I do get lost there sometimes. I suppose that’s all the more reason I’d better just invite you along with me, isn’t it?” he asked wearily.

Madi reached the short distance across the table to lay her fruit-sticky fingers on top of his. Captain Flint hopped and flapped her wings until she was digging her talons into Silver’s shoulder to roost, nipping affectionately at his ear as she always did.

“We make for Port Royal in two days,” Silver told Natty, who stood up a little straighter, a determined, serious sort of look settling over her features. “You’ll be better off wearing men’s clothes, though it’s a pity you’re too pretty to pass off as a lad.”

“I can go into the village and barter some tomorrow,” Natty offered, barely letting her excitement slip through in her words.

Silver nodded. He would feel better if Natty weren’t coming at all, but that ship had clearly sailed. He would just have to make peace with the fact that his daughter was a beauty, and he’d likely be having threatening words with half the men on the _Hispaniola’s_ crew, if she didn't threaten them with her knife first.

Silver thought fleetingly of Anne Bonny, in her britches and heavy coats, the hat pulled low over her face; she had tried to hide her birdlike bones, her big, kittenish eyes. Though some men said it was Jack Rackham that kept her safe, Silver knew better. That swaggering fop had the gifts of persuasion and cleverness, but he was one of the least intimidating people Silver had ever met. Silver suspected it was all Anne’s own doing; her gruff manner of speech—and the point of her sword—rather than her attire, which made men hold their tongues and keep their hands to themselves.

“Will you be all right to run the shop in our absence?” Silver asked his wife, who made a face.

“You ask as though you think the shop depends on you,” she replied, eyes dancing “it will be fine, John. Go on this trip and set yourself to rights.”

Silver nodded again, squeezing Madi’s fingers.

 

He had demons what needed facing down.

 

. . .

 

_Past_

“You know you can tell me,” Madi spoke aloud, voice cool and soothing in the dark of their bedroom.

Silver was lying with his back to her, silent tears slipping down the bridge of his nose to pool under his cheek where it resting against his pillow.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he said, careful not to let any tremble or shake find its way into his voice.

“Flint is dead and all you had to say was ‘about time.’” Madi put one arm around Silver’s waist, and he could feel the swell of her growing belly against his back. “In the darkness, I think maybe it is easier to tell the truth. I only wish you would let me listen.”

Silver exhaled shakily, throat and chest tight.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said quietly.

“Start at the heart of it,” Madi urged gently, and the way that she said it told Silver she already as good as knew.

The room felt vast in the dark, as if it could stretch on and on forever. If not for the open window, it might feel like a black vacuum, trapping Silver in his own head with no escape.

But there was a breeze that came through the window, and his wife was a solid, grounding presence at his back. Silver scrunched his eyes shut, felt more tears slip out at the corners.

“I hated that man,” he started, in a voice pulled tight and thick with the pain he suddenly could not ignore “but worse than that…”

“You can say it, John.”

Silver shook his head, even though Madi couldn’t see it. He swallowed around the lump in his throat, feeling as though it had grown spikes.

“I can’t,” he choked out, more a whisper than anything substantial.

When he closed his eyes, Silver saw freckled skin, weathered by sun and sea and worry. He saw broad shoulders fraught with tension, and a brow set in perpetual frown. He remembered how the solid rock of those arms, of that back, felt under his hands. He remembered the many scars, large and minuscule, that littered the whole of that body.

He saw those eyes, pale bluish-green and framed by pale lashes. He had no right to have seen them from so close up, had no right to these vivid images wreaking havoc on his mind.

The last words Flint had ever spoken to Silver echoed now in his head as loud as ship bells.

_“So be it, then.”_

“I loved him,” Silver said finally, and it felt as though the words were being ripped from him against his will.

“Oh, my love,” Madi hummed near Silver’s ear, her voice low and sweet as a balm. “Oh, my John. I know. I always knew.”

It was as good as a benediction, and Silver could not stop the flow of salt from his eyes now. He choked back a sob, raw and ugly. Madi held fast to him, murmuring soothing words in her own tongue.

Silver wondered what or who it was that Flint saw in his final moments.

Was it the specter of Miranda, as he’d seen all those months after the bloodbath in Charleston? Was it some black cloaked and hooded Death, beckoning him through the veil?

Was it, perhaps, Thomas Hamilton, smiling and bathed in bright light, one hand outstretched?

Whatever had been the last vision of James Flint, Silver hoped fiercely that it was not the faces of those he had done wrong. No ghostly corpses with vacant, accusing stares.

For all the things Flint had been in life, he was never truly an evil man.

Silver hoped that perhaps Flint’s soul, restless and miserable and wretched as it was at the end, had finally found the peace that so eluded him in life.

It was foolish to think about things like souls and final resting places, the realist in Silver knew it; still, he could not bear without great difficulty the idea that Flint was no more than flesh and bones in the ground now, that the man who had inhabited the vessel was gone from any and every plane or dimension that may exist.

“I didn’t want to,” Silver said wetly, thinking of how he had stumbled, unwittingly, under Flint’s spell. “I didn’t want to.”

Madi kissed his shoulder and breathed softly, a small puff of warm air over the exposed flesh.

“It is never a choice,” she said, then added “not when it is like that. No one would choose to walk into a fire and hope it does not burn them.”

And then no more words were spoken between them, the sounds of Madi’s breathing evening out into the slow draw of sleep. Silver lay awake for a time, mind unable to quiet itself.

He thought he might finally understand how Flint felt, the enormity of a loss like that.

He wondered how long it would take before the pain dulled from raw and gaping wound to throbbing ache.

  
He was hit with a fresh wave of grief when he realized the one person he would ask, was the one person he no longer could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am that people have been leaving me feedback and having nice discussions with me in the comments! I love you all! 
> 
> The next chapter is going to follow Silver and Natty to Port Royal, where Silver will just happen to bump into Squire Trelawney and sell him on the 'oh, i'm a poor old sea cook, so harmless uwu' bit. Natty will be wearing some dope menswear and being a badass. She may beat up Jim Hawkins. 
> 
>  
> 
> ALSO! The song I yanked the title from is a song by the National that makes me feel all shippy about many a tragic ship. It is especially poignant for these two because of the sea and the regret and so forth. The chorus tho 'I should live in salt for leaving you behind' is what I imagine Silver feels like. Ha ha ha aaaa i'm going away now. 
> 
> <3


	4. The Old Sea Cook

III.

“You look more peaceful on a boat, _pai_.”

Silver turned with a start. He hadn’t heard Natty come up beside him, so good at sneaking was she. He remembered how he’d used to be the same way, before he’d gained the peg that was to serve as a bell around a cat’s neck for the rest of his days.

“And you look far too pleased with yourself,” he replied, longing suddenly for the days when he could easily scoop her up and carry her tiny body on his hip.

Now, Natty was leaning over the rail and staring out at the water from the deck of the _Ulysses_ , a little merchant ship Silver had managed to procure passage to Jamaica upon.

The captain was a man who owed Silver a favor worth quite a good deal more than a five day journey between islands, so when Silver told him to consider the debt settled once they reached Port Royal, the captain was all too eager to welcome them aboard.

In the clothes she’d bartered—navy breeches that were just a hair too long on her, belted at the waist, a loose-fitting white shirt, discolored cotton stockings that kept slipping down, and a jacket that she’d discarded in the heat—Natty looked completely at ease at a ship, as though she belonged there.

The notion was unsettling. The last thing he needed was his only child deciding that she wanted to become a sailor. Or worse, he grimaced inwardly, a pirate.

“I thought you always said you hated the sea,” Natty said, ignoring his remark about her air of smugness.

“I do,” he muttered darkly, “I still do.”

He leaned over the rail beside her and stared out at the water, that vast expanse of bright greenish-blue, dappled with bright reflections of the sun’s rays.

The truth was that as soon as he’d stepped onto the Ulysses, Silver had felt more at home than he cared to admit—even only to himself. He moved on his crutch and peg leg with far more ease over a ship’s boards than he did on dirt or cobblestone roads, and the groan of the mast as the sails took wind was a surprisingly welcome sound.

Natty slid over so they were shoulder to shoulder, her on the tips of her toes and he leaning his weight on his good leg.

“I meant to ask you this before, _pai_ , but…how are you going to get into this crew, exactly?” she asked with that same expertly pitched tone that implied a casual, easy sort of nonchalance.

It was the exact tone he’d used to use when weaving his intricate webs of manipulation. He was caught yet again between frustrated annoyance and a rather pleased fatherly pride.

“I’m almost certain I should be offended that you think I’m as easy to trick into divulging information as any common stranger is.” he said wryly, giving her a look.

Natty grinned, her teeth strikingly white next to the honeyed brown of her skin.

“You’re easier, if anything,” she responded cheekily, the shell beads of her braids clacking with the breeze. “You’re my _father_.”

Silver tried and failed to hold back his snort of laughter, though he attempted (and failed again) to fix her with a stern look.

Natty raised her eyebrows, and Silver gave in with a sigh and roll of his eyes.

“I suppose,” he said, affecting a rather weary and put-upon sort of voice, “that you are right, my pearl. The plan is this,” and he went on to detail exactly how they would earn a legitimate place on the Hispaniola’s crew.

  
Silver knew he probably ought to be worried at the spark and gleam in his daughter’s eye, the way she nodded eagerly as he revealed each step of the plan. Believing himself to be clever had been the start of his downfall, and Silver dared not even think that the same could be possible for Natty.

. .

Port Royal was bustling with activity; ships docking and setting sail, loading and unloading cargo and passengers.

The town itself was not unlike Nassau in appearance, though it was distinctly more colonial in atmosphere than Nassau had ever been. Silver sent Natty into one of the taverns nearest the harbor to see if she could find out anything about the Hispaniola.

With a stroke of what seemed his long lost old fortune resurfacing once more, Silver stood eyeing the ships for no more than ten minutes when a man in a wig and coat bumped into him by accident.

“Oh, Heavens, my apologies, sir!” the man dithered, eyeing Silver’s crutch and peg.

Silver knew, in some fine-tuned bone of instinct within him, that this man was somehow a means to his end. He willed his face into a friendly, easy expression, and turned to face the stranger.

“No, no, the fault is mine. I shouldn’t be where I’m in danger of becoming an obstacle.” he smiled with just enough of both self-deprecation and charm. He also spoke with a slightly rougher accent than was natural for him, to give the stranger even more of a reason to believe himself superior. 

The wigged man doffed his hat politely yet with an air of nervousness, still clearly flustered at being in the presence of an invalid.

“Were—are—were you a sailor, sir?” the man inquired, and Silver enjoyed with great amusement the way he struggled with the tense in which he posed his question.

Glancing out at the water wistfully, Silver sighed and nodded. “Aye, sir. Far and away, I was a navy man. Lost my leg in a dreadful skirmish at sea with the French. I suppose I still miss the life,” he sighed again, which had its intended effect.

“I don’t suppose you might be, er, capable of cooking, perchance?” the man asked, looking for all the world like a squirrel in a wig and frock coat. “I’m afraid I’m rather desperate to find one. I’m helping to put together a crew for a prize voyage you see, and there are still positions what need filling.”

Silver could scarcely believe his luck. What were the odds that there was more than one ship crewing at Port Royal for a treasure voyage? Still, he had to be sure.

“I’m a modest man, sir, but I’ve always had a knack for the culinary,” he lied easily, trying not to smirk at the memory of that first pig he’d twenty years ago. “Tell me, what be the name of your ship?”

The wigged man chuckled, flushed with what must have been an unbearable heat, what with his heavy coat and thick stockings.

“Oh, yes of course, the ship. It’s a schooner, just two-hundred tonnes, and a sweeter vessel you’ll never sail upon. The _Hispaniola_ , she’s called.”

Silver let his face give nothing away. He smiled in what he accurately judged to be a very kindly, humble manner.

“I’d be glad as anything to be out on the water one more time, if I’m right in thinking that you mean to offer me the job,” he said.

“You’re a godsend, my good man, truly. And what might your name be, so that I may make a record?”

“John Silver, Long John to most,” Silver said with a duck of his head and another bland smile. He’d never cared much for the nickname, but it had certainly stuck, and so he was resigned to it long ago.

“Ah, excellent!” exclaimed the man, who rubbed his hands together and beamed. “I am called Trelawney. Squire, at your service.”

They shook hands firmly, at which point Silver noted with mild distaste that Trelawney’s palm was rather dry and papery, and set off toward the pub to find Natty.

Natty, whom Silver had somberly told Trelawney was not only his daughter and also a gifted cook, but indispensable in matters of health, not only to himself but to anyone who may have need.

Trelawney was the sort of man who was so easily impressed into a near frenzy by the right words and tone, it almost took the joy out of conning him, Silver thought.

In the tavern’s low, dirty lamplight, he caught Natty’s eye, and they shared a conspiratorial grin while the squire was otherwise occupied.

Silver knew he ought to be careful not to let his guard down. This was still, in the end, a plot to lead a mutiny and take control of a ship for the purpose of taking a sizable sum of money out from under the noses of those mutinied against.

Still, he could not help feeling glad that he had Natty at his side.

Her presence kept him from disappearing into his own head too far, kept him from drowning in the crush of the sea that haunted him. Natty was like a light, banishing his ghosts as long as she shone.

As long as she was there, and they could carry on nonverbal conversations at the expense of ridiculous men like squire Trelawney, Silver could ignore the one specter that lingered at the edges, just where the light ended.

. . .  
  


_Past_   
  


“What would you have me do?” Flint hissed, though they were tucked away in one of the huts, well out of earshot from anyone else. “Your body is fighting an infection, one that will likely worsen at sea. You’re no good to anyone dead.”

 _No_ _good_ _to_ you _dead_ , thought Silver with a sickening sort of bitter hopefulness.

Silver was to be left on the island with the Maroons, as a sort of insurance policy, Flint said. Or, at least, that was what he had told the rest of the crew. He would take some Maroons with him, willing fighters to aid in the cause, and leave Silver behind to recover whilst keeping an eye on things.

“And what if I die anyway?” Silver asked softly, realizing it for the first time that he just might. He was sitting up in his cot with his back against the wall, sweat making his shirt stick to his skin.

Mosquitoes droned on the other side of the netting, and the pain in Silver’s stump was a steady throb. Flint, from where he sat at the side of the cot, made a frustrated noise low in his throat. It was a sound of anguish, and hearing it drew considerable surprise from Silver, even in his fevered state.

Silver was beginning to understand the clenching panic he felt at being left there on the island; it was a fear of abandonment, a dread that had lurked undetected in his mind since he was a small boy and his mother had died.

He’d never been close enough to anyone since then, enough to feel their impending departure as deeply and acutely as a knife through the ribs.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Flint replied finally, looking at Silver with tired, sad eyes.

In that moment, Silver could see how much it all weighed on Flint. He hid it well more often than not, but every so often the glamour would drop just a little, revealing the exhausted, broken man beneath.

“I don’t think I know, either,” Silver admitted, wincing as a fresh wave of pain surged up his left side.

And that much was true; what was there to say? There was nothing so solid between them that it begged promises, nothing that Flint owed Silver. This was not one of the tender moments that passed between them in the darkness of their coupling, not the time for whispered words or confessions. There was nothing to confess.

Still, in his haze of delirium and fever, Silver wished that Flint had some part of himself left to promise.

Sweat beaded on his brow, trickled down his neck and pooled in the dip of his collarbones. He closed his eyes for a moment, tried to make sense of the jumble of thoughts all warring for control over his mind.

A long time seemed to pass, with neither man saying a word. Silver began to settle into what promised to be a sleep plagued with nightmares and strange hallucinations, when he felt a slow press of dry lips to his forehead, felt the scratch of beard.

“I cannot bear to think of you dying, John,” Flint rasped, then stood to leave “I just—can’t.”

And then he was gone.

Silver was gone, too; tumbling headlong into his diseased dreams. They seemed to stretch on endlessly, a vast ocean of ugly, unsettling things that had no solid shape.

  
When Silver awoke, he did so with a choked gasp. The searing pain was magnified by the nausea and weakness of the fever, and the cries ripped from him left his throat raw and stinging.  
  


They were removing more of his leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday update, as promised!
> 
> I actually can't believe I'm keeping my word on this, for this weekend. I had such a jam-packed Friday and Saturday that I was literally a log of procrastination today. 
> 
> (I DID GET TO SEE IL VOLO ON FRIDAY NIGHT THO, IN REALLLLLY GOOD SEATS, WHICH WAS MAYBE THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY YEAR)
> 
> In the flashback in this chapter, I wanted to kind of write the painful goodbye we DIDN"T GET in this weeks episode of Black Sails. 
> 
> Anyway, let me know how you're all feeling/thinking! Next chapter we shall be setting sail, and meeting Jim Hawkins, whom I have still not decided on a fantasy cast guy for.


	5. Jim Hawkins

IV.

When Silver finally met the boy who’d got to Billy’s papers before Black Dog could, he had to remind himself that appearances were often deceiving.

Jim Hawkins, as the lad was called, was older than Silver had pictured—for some reason he’d been imagining a boy of thirteen; Hawkins was, in fact, of an age with Natty—and several inches shorter than Silver. He had a wary kind of cleverness behind his inky-dark eyes, and Silver felt safe in assuming that Hawkins was the sort who spoke rarely, heard everything, and forgot nothing.

Silver was also mildly surprised to find that the boy wasn’t the typical, paste-white English colonist he’d been expecting; he was deeply tanned with a great quantity of shining black hair cut short at the neck, and had a swarthiness which would have (if not for the innate boyishness that still remained) made him seem much older than his years.

(He would later find out from Natty—who was taking her imagined duties as a spy far too seriously—that Hawkins’ mother was originally from Abruzzi.)

Silver was careful to be genial with the boy, even more so than he’d been with the squire and the uptight Dr. Livesy, whom he’d met the day after he’d met Trelawney. It was important that no man or boy on the crew (apart from those he had selected and planted as a means to his own ends) should suspect even the barest hint of any unfavorable aspects of Silver’s personality. This also meant that when he introduced Hawkins to Natty, Silver had to very pointedly ignore the way the young man’s cheeks flushed and his laugh held a shade of nervousness.

“It’s not going to bite you,” Natty said with an expression that lay somewhere between amusement and pity, as Jim Hawkins stared at the hand she’d extended for him to shake.

He turned a deeper shade of red than someone with his complexion ought to be able, and quickly took hold of Natty’s hand, shaking it rather more vigorously than was strictly necessary.

“Jim Hawkins,” he said, and Silver had to work very hard not to cringe at the earnestness in the boy’s voice.

“Natty Silver,” replied Natty, a bemused smile curling the corners of her lips. “You’re a little old for a cabin boy,” she remarked, like an afterthought.

Silver resisted the urge to hobble away as quickly as his crutch and peg would allow.

Hawkins’ eyes went round, and it took slightly longer than it should have for him to relax, to realize Natty was joking. He laughed, ducking his head.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true. I’ve never sailed before this, though—not properly, anyway. Fishing boats are the only sort I’ve ever been on.”

“Well, then,” said Natty with a wide grin, clapping him soundly on the shoulder, “I’ll be counting on you to catch us some decent food to prepare.”

It was then that Silver came up with the idea to lead his daughter back to the galley under the pretense of wanting to familiarize himself with the layout, completely unready for the new and terrifying reality of his daughter having mildly flirtatious interactions with stammering boys.

. .

“ _Please_ tell me you didn’t drag me down here just to get me away from that Hawkins boy,” Natty said with a roll of her yellowy-green eyes.

Silver sat down in a wooden chair and sighed with the relief of having the weight finally off his bad leg. He rested his crutch against the wall, just below where Captain Flint’s cage hung.

(That was another thing; he couldn’t bring himself to think about why in the name of all that was holy he had allowed Natty to bring that damned bird with them. It must have been a moment of temporary insanity.)

“I don’t like how he was looking at you,” Silver answered, far too petulantly for a man of his age.

Natty groaned and hoisted herself up to sit on the table at the center of the galley, stained as it was with the remnants of old meals. She swung her legs idly, the same as she’d done since she was a small girl.

“ _Pai_ , he’s harmless. If you want to dislike a man for the way his eyes undress me, take your pick of half the miscreants you recruited for this errand.”

Silver blanched at that. He hadn’t thought that any man who’d sailed with him previously would dare to even so much as think about Natty in an improper way. It set his teeth on edge now to think of it.

“Who?” he demanded, sitting up straighter in the chair. “Who looked at you? I swear on my fucking crutch, if I so much as hear one wrong word from any of those—”

“—if _I_ so much as hear one word from any of those rats, I’ll cut his bits off myself, _pai_.”

The thing was, Silver knew, that for all Natty’s blasé tones, she was capable of being extremely quick and showing no mercy. He’d found that out one day when she was fifteen; she came home with blood all over her dress and a man’s severed finger in the coin pouch on her belt. When Silver and Madi had asked what the hell had happened, Natty had crossed her arms and glared and said that some old lech outside the tavern couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

Appeased, at least for the moment, Silver nodded and let his eyes close for a moment.

He’d forgotten just how tiring it was, keeping up a ruse at all times. He hadn’t done this in so many years, played two sides of a con. He only hoped that he could manage to see the endeavor through to the end.

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,” Captain Flint the parrot crowed in her usual cheery sing-song.

“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum,” Natty finished, and Silver could have sworn the bird practically preened at her, pleased that someone appreciated her tune.

“Be a love and go fetch the coxswain, would you, Natty? I’d do it myself, but I’m afraid all the activity of preparing to sail has me dead to rights.” Silver tried to look feeble, but the snort his daughter let out told him he was failing. “Alright, I’m not actually all that tired,” he grumbled “but it bloody hurts,” he added, nodding at his bad leg.

“Am I to assume you want me to make myself busy elsewhere while you have this little chat with ol’ Israel?” Natty asked innocently, heaving herself off the edge of the table and onto her feet with a little grunt.

Silver gave his daughter a beatific smile.

“That, my pearl, is precisely what you are to assume.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” was Natty’s only reply.

. . .  
  


_Past_   
  


“Who’s T.H., then?” Silver asked, one night in Flint’s cabin after a particularly intense fuck. He was almost certain that he already knew, but he needed to hear it in Flint’s words for it to be true.

Flint had gone rigid next to him, had asked in a low voice, “where the fuck is this coming from?”

Silver paused, struggling to fight through the blissed out post-orgasm haze in order to phrase his next words very carefully.

What he ended up saying was “I read it in one of your books, while I was holed up in here, after they took my leg.”

Flint had exhaled loudly, like he was trying to keep his temper.

“You really don’t mean to find out all the things you know, do you?” he asked finally, a note of reluctant wonder in his voice. “You just stumble upon them.”

Silver had never felt so caught out in all his life.

It was, of course, completely true. He’d realized he had the knack for overhearing or uncovering very useful, valuable information when he was a small boy. He’d never known precisely why he had this ability, only that he did. Later on, he’d begun to bluff that it was all by his own cleverness that he obtained these secrets.

Flint had quite possibly, in the humid darkness of his ship’s cabin, revealed the most hidden truth about Silver’s nature that there was to reveal.

“I’d thank you not to let anyone else in on that fact, if you wouldn't mind,” Silver said, staring in disbelief up at the nothingness above him.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Flint said, and Silver could hear the wry smirk in his voice though he could not see it.

Several moments passed in silence, just the creaking of the ship and the sounds of their breathing, and then Flint spoke again.

“Thomas Hamilton,” he said softly, though they were utterly alone in the room “he was…Miranda’s husband, yes, but he was so much more than that. He became my true north, by the end of it.”

Not wanting to break the fragile bubble of the moment, Silver said nothing.

Flint, encouraged perhaps by the silence, continued, and as he told Silver the whole sordid, tragic story, Silver thought that this was maybe the first time he was seeing the man Flint was underneath it all.

He was a man possessed with grief, obsessed by vengeance, mad with the indignity of what became of the Hamiltons. Silver did not blame him; it was clear from the way he spoke that Flint had had something very rare with Thomas Hamilton, something that it had very nearly torn him apart to lose.

When Flint finished, Silver was at a loss for what to say. All he found he could offer was “I am so, so sorry, James.”

And then, Flint had reached for him, had found his lips in the dark and fitted their mouths together with a new kind of desperation.

They’d fucked nearly a hundred times before, but this time was distinctly different. It held something more than just frantic lust or the need for release; it was like Flint needed Silver to anchor him, to keep him in the world.

Silver found himself responding in kind to Flint’s fever-hot touches and low, needful sounds. Somehow, he wound up between Flint’s legs, pressing an oil-slick finger inside of him and groaning at the heat clenching around him.

It was the first time Flint had let him do it; they’d never so much as discussed the possibility before that moment, but Silver knew that it would change things yet again between them.

When at last Silver pushed inside that slick heat with his cock, he gave a full body shudder and struggled not to spend himself right then.   
Flint was no less demanding and dominant on the other end of sex, and he dug his fingers hard enough to bruise anywhere he could reach on Silver’s skin.

In the end, neither of them lasted terribly long; all it took was a rough whisper in Flint’s ear and a single pull on his cock to have him slicking both of them with his seed, and Silver found he couldn’t hold on any longer after that.

They stayed joined for several minutes after, Silver lying between Flint’s legs, face pressed into his chest.

When they parted and cleaned themselves, Silver wondered what this meant for them.

He knew that he was becoming dangerously blind to Flint’s less redeemable qualities the longer they continued this, but now Flint was well and truly under his skin, and Silver could see no way out.

They laid back down together, and Flint pressed a tender kiss to the corner of Silver’s mouth before settling onto his back and falling asleep.  
  


Silver followed soon after, and his dreams were full of storms and tentacled beasts and terrible, unbreakable sea curses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here he is, folks, Jim Hawkins ^__~ 
> 
> Abruzzi is what Abruzzo was formerly a part of, which is in the Teramo province in Italy! Thus, in my version, Jim Hawkins is half Italian. 
> 
> Sorry for not posting this last night, I was SO tired. So, here it is today! Next update will be Sunday :D 
> 
> I'm liking the formula of 'fun adventure in the present, sad feels in the past', so It'll probably keep on like that forever. Yay!


	6. Captain Smollett's Concerns

_V_.

Silver learned in the years that followed his retirement from pirating, that most people had a sort of inherent blindness to the disabled. This meant that Silver was able to regain some of his old eavesdropping prowess; what he lacked in stealth now, he made up for in spades by being contextually invisible.

Aboard the _Hispaniola_ , Silver was careful to keep his eyes and ears open at all times, and he’d told Natty to do the same when she was able.  


One morning, when the ship was a ways out at sea, Silver sat near the cabin, sharpening his knives and doing a fair job pretending not to be watching his daughter like a hawk. The captain, a rigid man by the name of Smollett, suddenly strode across the deck purposefully, and yanked open the door.

He shut it behind him quite pointedly, and Silver raised both eyebrows and leaned just a hairsbreadth closer to the cabin door so as to listen.

It was no secret that Trelawney and Smollett chafed at each other something fierce; the squire was something of a soft intellectual, and the captain a military man through and through, all corners and constantly in a state of irritation.

“Well, Captain, what have you to say? All is well, I hope? Shipshape and seaworthy, I daresay,” came the reedy voice of the squire.

“Well, _sir_ ,” Smollett began in an aggrieved tone, and Silver bit his cheek so as not to laugh at the mental image he’d suddenly got of the captain breathing smoke from his flaring nostrils “better speak plain, I believe, even at the risk of offense. I don’t like this cruise, I don’t like the men, and I don’t like my officer. That’s the short and sweet of it.”

Silver knew that he ought to go make himself busy elsewhere, that someone was likely to notice him lingering outside the door; even so, he stayed a few moments longer before remembering that the Hawkins boy was likely in the cabin.

There was an idea, thought Silver as he righted his crutch under his arm. Let Natty ask Jim about what he overheard in the cabin. For all the friendliness that the boy shared with Silver, he was ultimately far more likely to spill any secrets he may have to the girl whom he unfortunately trailed after like a pup after its master.

When he made his way back to the galley, Silver considered the plan he’d set into motion. The men he’d managed to recruit for his allies had heard of him in one way or another; it seemed that his exploits with Flint and the _Walrus_ still managed to precede him.

Those things he’d done…Silver sometimes had to close his eyes and swallow hard to quell the rising bile at the thought of the things he’d done under Flint’s flag. But—

—he couldn’t entirely put it all on Flint, he knew. There had to be a darkness inside of him already, to make those things possible. For all the things that James Flint was, he was not ultimately one who could conjure storms from the sea or plant seeds of his own black moods in another man’s heart.

Silver wondered if it wasn’t time to start shouldering some of the blame for what had happened. Not what happened to Flint—that, he already blamed himself for to the point that it had him nearly reaching for a bottle himself all the time—but, rather, what happened to himself.

Silver had always maintained that he was born of Flint, that Flint was the one who made that change in him.

Now, he was ready to admit that that wasn’t entirely true;  


Change, Silver knew, begun in one’s own mind, in one’s own soul.

.

 _Natty_  


Natty had to roll her eyes at the way her _pai_ seemed to change direction as easily as the wind. First, he’d all but warned her to stay away from the harmless Hawkins boy. Now, he wanted her to coax secrets from him using any means she saw fit.

She found the boy easily enough, sitting at one of the tables by himself and frowning down at the pages of a book. Natty slid into the seat across from him and kicked his foot under the table, grinning brightly when he looked up, startled.

Natty noticed (of _course_ she noticed) the way Jim Hawkins flushed deeply all the way down to the collar. She noticed, but she filed that information away for later; it wouldn’t do to wonder about such things right now, not when there was so much of the journey still ahead.

“I have it on good authority that you overheard quite the spat between the captain and Trelawney today,” Natty leaned in a little, a trick she’d learned from her _pai_ for creating the spark of camaraderie and conspiracy; it helped when you needed to quickly gain someone’s trust.

The din of the other sailors eating and arguing and laughing was loud enough that there was no worry of being overheard, but Jim seemed to glance sharply around before leaning in too.

“ _Sì_ —yes, I certainly did. The short version is that Smollett thinks Trelawney’s got rocks where his brains should be, that the whole voyage is fucked, and that all the men on board are untrustworthy,” Jim said in a rush, a touch of accent coloring his otherwise respectable British English.

Natty snorted; she didn’t much care for Captain Smollett—he seemed the sort who felt enjoying anything was _undignified_ —but she had to admit, he was right on all counts.

“Anything else?” she asked, widening her eyes in a way she knew made them very large and very appealing.

She very pointedly ignored the way her gaze was cataloguing things about Jim Hawkins’ appearance; his stubble of beard, the smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose, the heavy lids of his eyes, the dark hair on his chest revealed by the buttons he’d undone in the heat of the day. There had been plenty of attractive sailors passing through their port, so Natty knew well how to blind herself to their physical charms. She did allow herself a wordless, passing thought of appreciation—she’d never seen anyone with quite his features. She couldn’t help wondering about his parentage.

“Oh, yes,” Jim said, eyes glinting in the low lamplight, “After Smollett accused someone of sharing the contents of the map, implied your _padre’s_ parrot as an accessory to the map-treason, and all but predicted a mutiny, he stomped out like the _Commendatore_ from _Don_ _Giovanni_.”

Natty raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t the faintest idea what Jim was referencing, and he realized as much with a sheepish duck of his head.

“ _Spiacente_ , it’s just— _il_ _Commendatore_ is a character in _Herr_ Mozart’s opera, _Don_ _Giovanni_. He’s a vengeful statue come to life to accost the scoundrel Don Giovanni for his crimes. What I’m trying to say, rather badly, is that Smollett reminds me of an angry statue of a military commander,” Jim laughed, pushing a hand through his thick hair.

Natty found herself laughing, too, if only for the amusement of watching the poor boy struggle to explain the whole thing.

“Are you very fond of opera?” she asked, suddenly feeling very warm and comfortable, though her bare elbows were sticking to the table’s surface where her sleeves were rolled up, and the air was thick with the stink of the sweat of all the men.

Jim smiled broadly, and Natty ignored the way it made her stomach flip not unpleasantly.

“It’s funny, no? A poor man with tastes far beyond his means? When I was very small, we still live in _Italia_ , and my _mamma_ was a seamstress for the _Teatro_. She would bring me with her, sometimes, and I would hear them rehearsing.” he sighed, as if remembering very vividly the sounds of the opera house. “I am fortunate enough to have a wealthy cousin in _Firenze_ who keeps me informed of all the latest operas, as she is invited to attend most of them.”

Natty shook her head to clear her thoughts.

“I have to admit, I know next to nothing about anything you just said,” she told Jim with a half-smile “but is that where you were born, Italy?”

Jim nodded, his expression taking on a shade of wistfulness. He went on to explain to Natty that he was born in Italy, but his father was an English merchant who decided when Jim was old enough to travel by sea that they ought to settle in one of the new colonies, Port Royal.

Natty told him, in turn, about her mother’s people and how they had come to be at Nassau. She told him about the Portuguese grandmother she had only ever known through the songs and the mellifluous language her pai taught to her. She watched his expression carefully for any tiny signs of judgement or distaste when she told him about the empire of escaped slaves she descended from, but found neither.

Natty wasn’t stupid, nor was she blind; there were plenty of people who looked on her and her family with disgust, who would condemn her father for taking a black woman as a wife. There were plenty of people who had found her to be lacking in worth due to the color of her skin and the kink of her hair. She’d learned to ignore the things whispered by the higher classes just as she’d learned to ignore the louder jeers and harassments of more boorish sorts. She was the daughter of kings and queens, and the squalling of the faceless, nameless taunters were of little consequence to her.

At some point, she told Jim about how she had cut off the fingers of a fat, lecherous man who had grabbed her in an alley—to her surprise and delight, he grinned and said it was a pity she hadn’t taken more than that.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, their knees brushed under the table, and neither made any effort to move them away.

Jim told Natty about how he had struggled to learn English at first, how he’d had such difficulty with the rounded r’s, the flat, short vowels. He admitted that he still thought in Italian most of the time, a fact which had exasperated his father to no end.

Natty listened with her chin on her hand, as Jim described what he could remember of life in Italy, wondering how exactly the conversation had gone from information-gathering to actual personal sharing.

She didn’t want to think about what her _pai_ would say when she returned to the galley, an hour later than they’d agreed upon.

She didn’t want to think about that, so she simply didn’t.

  
. .  


“I _could_ ask you what the bloody hell took you so long,” Silver drawled from his cot when Natty finally crept back into their galley quarters.

Natty glared at him, but it was without heat. “Shut your eyes, old man,” she said, waving one hand in his direction “I need to change.”

Silver obeyed, scrunching his eyes closed while his daughter rummaged for the small men’s nightclothes she’d brought with her. When she gave him the all-clear to open his eyes again, she was sitting with her legs over the edge of her hammock, wrapping her braids up with the bright cloth she always did at night.

“I _could_ ask you,” he said, picking up where he’d started “but I really would rather not. We can both feign obliviousness, if you like.”

Natty snorted, flopping onto her back with one leg still dangling over the side of the hammock.

“The shortest version would be to say that Smollett smells the mutiny, no one believes him, Trelawney is a dithering fool, Livesy is caught somewhere in the middle, and the one thing they all agree on is that _you_ are the most honest and honorable man on the whole damn ship.”

There was a pause, a long moment which stretched out between them. Then, both Silver and his daughter positively _exploded_ with laughter.

They were mostly careful not to outright cackle, but it was a near thing. Each time they tried to settle themselves, Silver would catch Natty’s eye or the reverse would happen, and it set them off all over again.

When they were nearly calmed down, Natty’s expression turned serious.

“There is one other thing, _pai_ ,” she said slowly, and Silver sobered himself as well as he could “Smollett says the parrot is a traitor.”

The infernal parrot, hearing mention of herself, perked up and gave her usual refrain of “pieces of eight!”  


Silver would have told the bird to shut up, if he hadn’t been laughing so hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is so long, I've broken it into two parts! The next chapter will include the angstiest flashback yet! hooray! 
> 
> In case anyone even cares at all, I inserted some opera references because I'm an opera singer in training, and it infiltrates every single thing I do. Don Giovanni premiered in the late 1700s, where I'm setting this story. It's totally not IMPLAUSIBLE to give Jim a fancy Florentine cousin to send him updates by mail about opera. Idk. Whatever it's fiction and I'll just keep being ridiculous. 
> 
> I'm totally stuck in my other SilverFlint fic, so pls send me happy vibes to finish it. 
> 
> This one, however, has really run away with me holding the reins. 
> 
> I know Natty is an OC, but she in particular has run away with me! Don't worry, though, this won't turn into a Jim/Natty love story. If anything, it's going to be a Natty ignores her feelings until the very end story. 
> 
> <3 let me know how you like! And stay tuned for the super angsty all SilverFlint next chapter! woooo


	7. Just a Stone in the Ocean

  
_Past_  


When he’d been reunited with Flint, Silver had felt something in his chest unclench. Even in his fevered state, and the painful haze of realizing what sort of bottomless pit exactly he’d fallen into, Silver had thrummed with worry.

There were so many things that could go wrong in this life, so many factors which performed a precarious dance of balance day in and day out, a balance which could be easily disrupted by a single false step.

Silver thought that he saw more than a little of that relief he felt reflected in Flint’s eyes, and it hit him squarely in the ribs like a fist.

Soon, they were alone in one of the thatch-roofed huts, and Silver couldn’t bear not knowing any longer.

“What did you do?” he asked, staring warily at Flint, who shook his head.

“Blackbeard challenged me to a duel.” Flint answered, and Silver felt suddenly ill. “He nearly had me, would have done if not for Vane. We didn’t get the fleet,” Flint added bitterly.  
  
Silver balled his fists at his sides, helplessly shaking with the sudden rage of it; there was no limit to what recklessness Flint would get up to with no one there to pull him back from the edge.

It was pointless, Silver knew, to voice these opinions to Flint—at least at present.

There were things he had learned never to bring up, and things he had learned when precisely he might broach them. There were other things, still, which Silver knew were best asked in the humid dark after they’d traded the currency of shared breaths and sweat.

Silver knew he had no business caring for Flint, but still, his stubborn self persisted. It vexed him that the feeling only seemed to grow, and it worried him more than the infected flesh of his leg did.

It was an achilles heel, to care for anyone.

The thought made Silver laugh humorlessly; Achilles.

In some twisted, poisonous way, without honor, he was the Patroclus to Flint’s Achilles.

Silver knew (or at least, at the time, thought he did) that all of this would end in Flint’s death, and his own.

. .

_“Who’ll be able to take their eyes off of the one-legged creature?”_

The words had played over and over again through Silver’s head like a loop, faintly at times, then loud enough to irritate. He’d thought that speaking some of his bitterness aloud might help to ease it; he was wrong.

Now, he stood over the bloodied, unrecognizable mess of ruined flesh that was Dufresne, breathing hard and praying the pounding in his ears would drown out the echoes of his own voice.

It had felt better than anything Silver had ever experienced before, bashing Dufresne’s hateful face with his peg, feeling the iron boot connect with and break his skull. Silver knew that he should stop, in the moment, but he couldn’t seem to. each blow he delivered was accompanied by a memory of his own weakness since losing his leg.

The initial crack of the metal cup across Dufresne’s cheek was satisfying, far more so than it ought to have been, and Silver had thought _‘so this is how it feels,’_ and he’d wondered _‘is this what Flint feels like when he gives in to his rage?’_

As men came and took Dufresne’s body away, Silver waited for the remorse to flood him, for the reality of what he’d done to crash over him in waves of nausea.

He waited, but they did not come.  


He felt only a righteous sort of satisfaction, a sick dark pride.

  
. .  


Later that night, he was standing toe to toe with Flint in an otherwise empty cabin, breathing hard and trying to keep his hands from shaking.

“There is an element of this journey into the dark that I’m only now beginning to appreciate,” he told Flint, looking up to lock eyes with the captain.

“What’s that?” Flint asked lowly, and everything about him suddenly made Silver want to pin the older man against the wall, to grip his arms so that they bruised.

“How good it feels,” he replied instead, heart pounding as he catalogued every minute shift in Flint’s expression at his words.

Silver hardly realized he was up against the wall until he felt Flint’s mouth crash fiercely against his own, Flint’s hips digging into his. The insistent length of Flint’s erection was unmistakable through his trousers, and Silver could think no thoughts other than _yes_.

They shoved and pulled at each other with unkind hands, kissed with sharp teeth. Silver tasted blood, sharp and metallic on his tongue, though he wasn’t sure to whom it belonged. Flint tore at his shirt, fumbled with the buckle of his belt. Silver tipped his head back to rest against the wall, hit with a fresh wave of lust when Flint sank to his knees before Silver.

“What are you doing?” Silver panted, though he already knew the answer.

Flint only smirked up at him before freeing Silver’s aching cock from his trousers, and taking it into his mouth.

Silver fought with the urge to cry out, feeling Flint’s lips around him, being inside that wet heat. His hips thrust forward involuntarily, and Flint chuckled low in his throat, running his tongue along the underside of Silver’s erection. Silver’s hips bucked again, and Flint reached up and held them in place with firm hands.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t done this before—they had, plenty of times—but there was something different about it now. It was the first time Flint had gotten on his knees for him, though, and that fact alone made Silver dizzy with lust. His body was still singing with the adrenaline of the brutal murder he’d committed just a few short hours ago. The fire that burned in him now was something new and more intense, blazing and sparking in the wake of an event which marked a change in Silver.

He felt like an animal, desperate to rut against something, struggling in vain against the steady hands which held his hips down while Flint methodically took his cock deeper.

Then, Flint pulled off of him, making him cry out for the loss of it.

“There is such power in you, John,” Flint rumbled, voice hoarse and ragged with his own desire.

Silver whined, desperately close to the edge of orgasm, needing that stimulation back.

“Captain— _James_ —just, _please_ ,” Silver rasped, not caring if he was begging. He knew that even the simplest touch to his straining erection would likely set him off.

“If I finish you off now, like this, I wonder…” Flint smirked up at him, his lips bruised and bitten red.

“Wonder what? Fucking _hell_ , James,” Silver groaned, the throbbing ache in his cock growing painful.

“If, later on, I wanted you to fuck me, hard enough so that I’ll feel it tomorrow, would you be able to?” Flint asked, corners of his mouth curling up even further.

Just from those words, and from the greedy, feral look on Flint’s face, Silver felt himself shudder and spent himself in thick hot spurts.

Flint closed his eyes and leaned forward just a little, so his face was painted in wet stripes of Silver’s come, a sight which Silver tried to burn into his brain so as never to forget.

When he was finished, he slumped against the wall, utterly depleted.

Flint stood, licking some of the sticky whiteness from where it had splashed across his mouth. The visual of this was so striking, that Silver—exhausted as he was—felt the heat flare up in him again for a moment, driving him to pull Flint in for a filthy, salted kiss.

“How do you want—?” Silver glanced down at Flint’s undone trousers, where his erection had no doubt grown quite painful.

“I don’t fucking care, John, just _touch_ me.”

Silver obeyed, spitting into his palm before reaching down to wrap his fingers loosely around Flint’s cock; Flint’s head dropped to Silver’s shoulder at the contact, the low growl of his moan vibrating against Silver’s neck.

It didn’t take long; only a few odd strokes and a sweep of Silver’s callused thumb over the head of Flint’s cock was all it took to have the captain cursing and biting into the muscle of Silver’s shoulder as he came into Silver’s hand.

They stayed there for several moments, saying nothing.  


When they came back to themselves, they parted to clean up the mess they’d made, and Silver’s mind wandered to the day’s earlier events.

He wondered if it was the thought of himself as being ruthless, being able to kill a man so brutally, that had gotten Flint’s blood up. He wondered if, instead, it might be what he’d said to Flint about turning to his darker side.

Possibly, probably, Flint was lonely on his island. Perhaps the promise of a companion in vengeance, a comrade in that rage which boiled and spilled over like hot black tar, was intoxicating to Flint.

  
Silver hated how much he wanted to be there at Flint’s side, in that awful place.  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHH what have I done?
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has been following along, here is the promised angstfest! yay! 
> 
> <3 please keep commenting, I love love love to hear from anyone/everyone! 
> 
> Next chapter, my spin on the famous apple barrel scene!


	8. What Jim Heard in the Apple Barrel

VI.  
  


Silver hated pirates.

He always had, and he was pretty certain he always would.

They were so often not men of great intelligence, and therefore, also decidedly not men of great patience, either. He found himself in the galley with his men, placating them as best he could so as to distract them from the absolutely worthless plan they’d come up with to mutiny right away.

There was also the small matter of that Hawkins boy hiding in the apple barrel, but Silver felt certain that was the least of his problems at present.

“How much bloody longer are we supposed to sit around waitin’ for your signal?” griped Hands, the coxswain. He spat into the nearest available vessel, which happened to be the pot Silver had been planning to use for cooking that evening’s meal. “I’ve had me just about enough of that smug sonofawhore Smollett, I tell you. I’ve half a mind to go into that cabin, and—”

“—you’ve half a mind on a good day, Israel, so your head is just as much account as it’s ever been, which is to say, none at all.” Silver snapped, growing tired of dealing with impatient, unruly, unwashed pirates. “Here’s what I say: you’ll keep on as we’ve all been, you’ll speak soft and live hard, and you’ll bloody well keep sober, ’til I give my word, and you may lay to that, my son.”

The coxswain frowned, clearly aware he’d been insulted, but somehow puzzled as to exactly which part of what Silver had said had been the actual insult.

“I’m not saying _no_ ,” he complained with another deep frown, “what I’m sayin’ is _when_ , Silver? That’s what I says.”

“ _When_! Jesus—bloody _when_ ,” Silver muttered to himself, running a hand over his face. “Fine, you want to know when? I’ll tell you when. Smollett may be an insufferable prick, but he’s a first-rate seaman, and he sails the blessed ship for us. Then you’ve got the squire and the doctor with their map—I don’t know where the fucking thing is anymore than you do. Wouldn’t it make the most sense,” Silver looked from each man to the next, before settling back on Hands, “to let them find the stuff and get it aboard? If I trusted any of you piss poor excuses for men, I’d have the captain navigate us halfway back again before I struck.”

“We’re all able seamen aboard here,” piped up one of the younger men, Dick.

“We’re all fo’c’s’le hands, you mean,” Silver growled, very near to losing his temper now. “We can steer a course, but who’s to set one? That’s what all you gentlemen split on, first and last. If I had my way, I’d have Captain Smollett work us back into the trades at least; then, we’d have no bloody miscalculations and a goddamn spoonful of water a day.”

Nobody said anything, and Silver got the distinct impression that Natty was trying very hard not to snicker from her tucked-away place in the corner.

“But,” Silver smiled mirthlessly “I know exactly the sorts you all are. I’ll finish with ‘em at the island, as soon as we’ve got the haul on board, and a pity it is. But you’re never happy ’til you’re drunk. You know, it makes me sick to sail with you lot.”

“Easy, Long John,” cried Israel. “Who’s crossin’ you?”

Silver paced across the small space, his peg thumping deliberately against the shipboards with each step he took.

“Why,” he began in a conversational tone, “how many tall ships, do you suppose, have I seen laid aboard? How many brisk lads have I seen drying in the sun at Execution Dock? And all for this same hurry and hurry. Are you listening to me? I’ve seen more than you could imagine at sea, enough to know that if you’d only hold your fire and stay the course, you’d be rich men.”

It was so quiet in the galley, Silver could have heard a pin drop.

“But not you,” he laughed, low and cold “not you. I _know_ you. You’ll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang.”

Israel spoke up, cementing Silver’s low opinion of his intelligence.

“Everyone always said you were somethin’ of a chaplain, John, but there’s others as could hand and steer as well as you,” Israel said, stupidly using Silver’s given name. “They liked a bit o’ fun, they did. They wasn’t so high and dry, but took their flint, like jolly companions every one.”

“So?” said Silver, gritting his teeth. “Well, and where do you think they are now, Israel? Pew was that sort, and he died a blind beggar. Flint was,” and Silver took care not to let it show on his face the way it stung to say it, “and he died of rum at Savannah. They were a sweet crew, only, now where are they?”

“But,” asked the young man Dick, “when do we lay ‘em athwart, what are we to do with ‘em anyhow?”

“Very good, my lad! Keeping to the business end of it, very admirable,” Silver grinned wolfishly. “Well, what do you think? Put them all ashore like maroons? That would have been England’s way. Or cut them down like pork? That would’ve been Flint’s way, or Billy Bones’s.”

“Billy was the man for that,” interjected Israel. “ _‘Dead men don’t bite,’_ Billy always said. Well he’s dead now himself; he knows the long an’ short of it, and if ever a rough hand come to port, it was Billy.”

“Right you are,” said Silver, wishing very much that he could break something. “But mark you here; I’m an easy man—I’m a hard man not to like, everyone says. But this time, it’s deadly serious. Duty is duty, mates. Personally, I say let them all go down to Davey Jones’ locker.”

Silver knew he’d have to answer to his daughter later, heard the sharp intake of breath from where she stood at the far back corner of the galley, but he pushed that aside. He would have to explain to her that sometimes it was easier to do the worse thing. 

“I don’t want any of them turning up later on down the line, no witnesses. When the time comes, do what you will.”

The coxswain gave a happy cry. “You’re a man after all!”

“You’ll say so, Israel, when you see,” said Silver. “Only one thing I claim—I claim Trelawney.” he remembered the way he’d seen the squire following Natty with his eyes, shadowing her movements. “I’ll wring his stupid calf’s head off his body with my bare hands.”

“I think I fancy an apple,” said Dick, and Silver thought of Hawkins hiding inside it.

“Oh, stow that!” he snapped “don’t you get to sucking that bilge, my lad. Go and have yourself some of the rum. I’ve a gauge on the keg, mind. Fill a pannikin and bring it up.”

Dick was gone a short while, and in that time, Israel told Silver that no other men on the crew would join in the mutiny. It figured.

When the boy returned, Silver took the first pull of the rum, nose wrinkling at the smell and taste of it.

“Here’s to old Flint,” he said quietly, and just as he was swallowing, there was a cry from the lookout.

_“Land ho!”_   
  


Silver caught Natty’s eye as the rest of the men all stormed up to the deck, and he nodded in the direction of the barrel.

He didn’t need to tell her what to do; she was his daughter, she knew.

.  
  


_Natty_   
  


Sliding the lid off the apple barrel, Natty was almost knocked off her feet by how fast Jim Hawkins stood up.

He grabbed her shoulders, eyes wide in the bright moonlight.

“I have to tell the captain, Natty.” he said in a rush, like he was afraid of her.

She brought her hand up to rest against his stubbled cheek, just for a moment.

“I know, Jim. And my _pai_ knows. You have my word that neither he nor I will harm you.”

Jim’s brows knit in confusion, then he shook his head, taking Natty’s hands in his and holding them tightly.

“They’re going to kill everyone,” he said with grave certainty. “They won’t leave anyone alive, no matter what you or your _padre_ says.”

Natty knew that Jim was right, of course; once they had started, it would be impossible to stop the pirates’ bloodlust. She herself would likely have to stay well out of the way, barricaded in the cabin or the galley until the worst of it was over.

But looking at the young man in front of her, the person whom she had come to be fond of, one of the first friends her own age she’d made, Natty felt suddenly panicked at the idea of losing him.

“You can join us,” she said quickly, squeezing his fingers where they were laced with her own “my father will say yes. You don’t have to die with the others, Jim.”

Jim shook his head again, a sad smile ghosting over his lips.

“Your _padre_ is not a bad man, Natty,” he said, brushing his thumb over the skin of her wrist. “But those others…they are the worst kind of men. I can’t be a part of it, I’m sorry.”

Natty had expected this response, but she had not anticipated how it would make her feel as though she were listing, falling where the ground had dropped out from beneath her feet.

She wanted to say something, but she was at a loss. She racked her brain for something, anything that could be used to talk the situation back around to her desired outcome, but the magic of conjuring words and using them to her purpose had, for the first time ever, failed her.

Jim brought her hands up to his lips, then, and pressed a kiss to the flesh of her palm.

“Meeting you has been most enchanting, Miss Natty,” he said softly.   
  
Then, he let go of her hands and walked out of the galley, presumably to find the captain and the doctor, to inform them of what lay ahead.

Natty stood there, frozen, staring at her hands.

All she could think was, _this wasn’t supposed to happen._  
  


As to what, exactly, the ‘this’ was that she meant, well; Natty supposed she certainly could take her pick.   
  
  
There were quite a good many things that transpired in the last few days which were not supposed to have happened.  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOA! A double post today! ;) I figure I owed you all, so I hope you enjoy! 
> 
>  
> 
> Now shit's about to get real! woOOoOO


	9. Skeleton Island

VII.

  
Silver didn’t sleep at all.

Natty had run into the galley as the rest of the men were clambering to get to the deck for a glimpse of the isle.

“ _Pai_ ,” she’d gasped, clutching at his sleeve with worry marring her young face “Hawkins is going to tell the captain and them about what he heard the apple barrel.”

Silver had hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but deep in his gut he’d known it would.

Hawkins wasn’t the sort of lad that could be bought, nor intimidated, and more’s the pity, thought Silver.

One more throat to be cut, his mind added unhelpfully.

“You’re not going to kill him with the others?” Natty’s eyes were huge and round in the low light, and for all her cleverness and her world-weary attitudes, in that moment she was a frightened girl of seventeen.

Silver wanted to tell her that he would spare the boy, wanted to tell her that it would all be alright and that he would make his men aware not to lay a finger on Jim Hawkins. He didn’t have that kind of lie left in him anymore, not for his only daughter.

“If they can catch him, they will do what they must,” he said simply.

Natty nodded mutely, angrily wiping away a tear with the back of her hand.

“What do you want me to do when the time comes?” she asked, straightening to her full height and lifting her chin to look Silver in the eyes.

Silver thought of the many ways that things could go awry. He had already envisioned terrible fates for his daughter, and all of the dangers that could befall her. Now that they were toeing the edge of the precipice before the drop, he found that he was calm.

“Whatever you wish to do, my pearl.” he said finally, and pulled her to him tightly.

She felt so small in his arms, and yet so very solid, so strong. Silver kissed the top of Natty’s head and pulled away.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” he said with a small smile.

“I reckon I’ll get there first,” Natty nodded down at Silver’s leg with a smile of her own “so I’ll wait for you.”

  
.  
  


The appearance of the island in the morning was quite different from how it had seemed the previous night.

There was no breeze to speak of, but the ship had made quite a good ways during the night, now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast.  
  
Lush, tropical jungle covered a large part of the surface; the glowing greenish tint of this was broken up by streaks of white sand in the lower lands, and by many tall palms and ferns. The hills of the island ran up clear above the dense vegetation in spires of naked rock.  
  
All of these were strangely shaped, just as Silver remembered, and the Spyglass—which was by three of four hundred feet the tallest on the island—was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side, and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put a statue on.

The _Hispaniola_ was rolling scuppers in the ocean swell, the booms tearing at the blocks, the rudder banging about; the whole ship creaked and groaned as though it were protesting the abuse. Silver watched from his place at the rail, and waited.

He mused on the island itself for a few moments, as the smell of the sea filled his nose and his lungs.

Perhaps, he thought, it was this—perhaps it was the look of the island, with its familiar jungle and wild stone spires, and the crashing surf which foamed and thundered on the steep beach. The sun shone bright and beat down hot upon his shoulders, and the shore birds were fishing and crying all around, and anyone would have thought that they should be glad to get to land after being so long at sea.

But, as it was, Silver’s heart sank. His stomach twisted and protested, and he hated the very thought of Treasure Island.

  
The morning was met with much complaint and foul temper from the crew, as being becalmed meant there would be quite a lot of work to be done.

First, the boats had to be got out and manned, then the ship warped three or four miles round the corner of the island, and up the narrow passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island.

Jim Hawkins volunteered for one of the boats, and Silver had to bite down on his cheek hard enough to draw blood when Natty volunteered as well. He swallowed down the panic and the _she_ _has_ _no_ _business_ that was ready on the tip of his tongue. She was nearly grown, and she was not his to command. She was his child, not his property.

Silver moved eventually and stood by the steersman, conning the ship.

He still knew the passage like the back of his hand, and though the man in the chains got everywhere more water than was down in the chart, he never hesitated.

“There’s a strong scour with the ebb,” he heard himself say, and wondered vaguely when the language of the sea had become as natural to him as his mother tongue “and this here passage has been dug out with a spade.”

He remembered watching the men dig it out, in fact. Billy Bones leading several of the other _Walrus_ men in the backbreaking work. Silver shook his head as if to shake the thoughts away.

The _Hispaniola_ brought up just where the anchor was in the chart, about a third of a mile from each shore, the mainland on one side and Skeleton Island on the other. The bottom was clean sand, and the plunge of the anchor sent up clouds of birds crying over the jungle. In less than a minute, though, they had returned, and all was silent again.

The place was entirely landlocked, buried in jungle, the vines and ferns coming right down to high water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hilltops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheater. Two little rivers, or rather, two swamps, emptied out into a sort of pond, and the foliage around that part of the shore was possessed of a kind of poisonous brightness.

From the ship, Silver could see nothing of the house or stockade, for they were quite buried among trees; and if it had not been for the fact that he’d been there before, one might have imagined that this crew was the first to ever lay anchor there since the island had risen from the sea.

Not a breath of air moved, nor a sound was made but that of the surf booming half a mile away along the beaches and against the rocks outside. A strange, stagnant smell hung over the anchorage—it was, to Silver, like sodden leaves and damp earth, like the jungle after a rain. Like tree rot and day-old corpse, too.

He noticed Dr. Livesy sniffing the air, and sniffing repeatedly as though he could not get the scent from his nose.

Silver was prepared for the smell, at least. He hated it, but it hadn’t come as a shock.

The doctor tutted and shook his head.

“I don’t know about treasure,” he said, “but I’ll bet my wig there’s fever here.”

Silver noted with exasperation that his men on the crew were doing next to nothing to conceal their true motives. When they came aboard, they decided to lay about the deck growling together in talk, receiving even the slightest order with black looks, and grudging, careless obedience. Even the honest hands—those who refused to join in the mutiny—seemed to have caught the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another.

The mutiny hung over them all like a thundercloud, and that darkness was only augmented by the odd, malevolent aura being given off in waves by the island itself.

Silver moved from group to group, nearly exhausting himself with good advice, perhaps overdoing it with civility and smiles. If only he had someone to enforce his words, as he’d used to.

He missed having a partner in this, he realized with an ache. Someone to do what he could not. With Flint, Silver had been the voice. When things were the best they ever were between Flint and Silver, it seemed that nothing was outside their reach. They could bend men’s wills to their own without ever letting on that they were doing so.

Now, Silver was alone in this, the most dangerous thing he’d undertaken since leaving the life all those years ago.

  
When at last Captain Smollett allowed for shore leave, Silver began to organize the parties.

It was finally decided that six men were to stay on board, and the remaining thirteen, including himself and Natty, would embark.

He noticed almost immediately when Hawkins snuck onto the boat going ashore, but he had more to worry about than a cabin boy with no sense of self-preservation.

Until, that is, Jim Hawkins grabbed hold of an overhanging branch and swung out of the boat and onto shore.

“Jim!” he shouted, but before he could call out again, Natty had done the same, following Jim into the thicket of jungle. “Natty, you bring him back, now, my girl! Bring him back, and mind yourself!”

Silver, were he a religious man, would have offered up some sort of prayer or plea for his daughter’s safe return.

As it was, he had never believed in any deities other than the all-consuming goddess of the sea, and so he had to trust that Natty was strong enough and clever enough to survive the wilds of Skeleton Island on her own.

. .

  
_Natty_

  
As soon as she had her feet on ground, Natty ran through the jungle with her knife drawn, following the nearish sounds of Jim’s footsteps snapping over twigs.

She was used to this sort of terrain, used to wandering in dense woods and swiftly navigating all of the ins and outs of them.

After at least five minutes at a sprint, she caught up to him in an open piece of undulating, sandy land about a mile long, dotted with a few palms. On the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks which shone vividly in the sun.

She stopped a moment to catch her breath, and found she wasn’t nearly as winded as the boy standing a few yards away. She took in the vivid, flowering plants and took note of a fat lizard sunning itself on a nearby rock.

“Jim!” she called out, and the boy turned abruptly, startled.

When he saw who it was that had called his name, though, his shoulders dropped a little with relief, and he started towards her.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, still panting a little, with cheeks flushed from exertion and the heat.

“Making sure you don’t get yourself killed,” Natty replied tartly, rolling up the sleeves of her shirt in an effort to diffuse some of the heat.

She longed for one of the light shifts she wore at home, brightly-colored things made of the thinnest fabrics, in the patterns of her mother’s people. The men’s clothes, though not of heavy fabric, were stifling in the heat.

“What will your _padre_ say?” Jim asked, pushing the sweat-damp hair off his forehead.

Natty shrugged, reaching for the long piece of leather cord she kept in her belt pouch so she might tie back her heavy braids.

“He told me to do what I would, so I did.” she replied, deftly gathering the mass of her hair and tying it at the nape of her neck. “I hadn’t expected you to be so daft as to run off the first chance you got, though.”

Jim grinned and looked away. He opened his mouth to say something, but it was then that a flock of birds went flapping out of the foliage, and voices could be heard growing louder and nearer.

“It’s my _pai_ and his men!” Natty hissed, and pulled Jim into the nearest cover, tugging him down to squat beside her.

“What are they—” Jim began, but Natty swatted him and shushed him and clamped a hand over his mouth for good measure.

She ignored the way she could feel him smiling against her palm.

The voices continued, and the first voice—which she recognized to be her father’s—once more took up its story. She strained to hear what exactly was said, but all she could discern was that the conversation was very fierce and very earnest.

Withdrawing her hand from Jim’s mouth, Natty motioned with one silent finger over her own lips for him to be quiet, and to follow her lead. With her in front, they crawled on all fours steadily and slowly towards where the men were gathered, stopping just at a little gap in the leaves where they might see clear down into the green dell where Silver and the crew stood face to face in conversation.

Natty saw that her _pai_ had cast off his hat, and was appealing to the likely nonexistent better nature of a man with a very red face.

“Mate,” he was saying, “it’s because I think highly of you—as highly as gold dust, and you may lay to that—if I hadn’t took to you like pitch, do you think I’d have been here warning you? All’s up, and you cannot make nor mend; it’s to save your neck that I’m speaking, and if one of the wilder ones knew it, where would I be, Tom? Tell me, where would I be?”

Natty knew that tone; it was the one her _pai_ used when he was at the end of his rope but still trying to maintain that easy affability that he wore like armor.

“Silver,” said the other man in a voice as hoarse as a crow, “Silver, you’re old, and you’re honest, or has the name for it. You’ve money, too, which lots of poor sailors hasn’t; and you’re brave, or I’m mistook. And will you tell me you’ll let yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sure as God sees me, I’d sooner lose my hand. If I turn against my duty—”

And then, all of a sudden, he was interrupted by a noise.

One of the honest hands, then, thought Natty. Far and away, there arose a cry of anger, and then another, and then one horrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spyglass re-echoed it a score of times, and the whole troop of birds rose again, darkening heaven with a simultaneous whirr.

The death yell echoed in Natty’s brain, but silence had reestablished its empire, and only the birds rustling back into their roosts and the boom of distant suggest disturbed the afternoon’s languor.

Tom, the man to whom Natty’s _pai_ spoke, leapt at the sound like a horse at the spur, but Natty’s _pai_ had not so much as blinked. He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch, watching his companion like a snake about to spring.

Natty had not often seen her father this way, though she had always known him capable of it. Just as her _muma_ was both tranquil and mild as well as able to conjure hurricanes with her anger, Natty’s _pai_ was at once harmless and fatal.

“John!” cried Tom, stretching out his hand.

“Hands off!” Silver cried, leaping back a yard with an agility and security even Natty had not been aware he possessed.

“Hands off if you like, John Silver,” said the other. “It’s a black conscience that can make you feared of me. But, in heaven’s name, tell me what was that?”

“That?” returned Silver, smiling away, but warier than ever. His eyes gleamed like blue glass caught in the light. “That? Oh, I expect that’ll be Alan.”

And at this, poor Tom flashed out like a hero.

“Alan!” he cried. “Then rest his soul for a true seaman! And as for you, John Silver, long you’ve been a mate of mine, but you’re a mate of mine no more. If I die like a dog, I’ll die in my duty. You’ve killed Alan, have you? Kill me too, if you can. But I defies you.”

And with that, this stupidly brave fellow turned his back directly on Natty’s pai, and set off walking for the beach.

With a cry, Silver seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out from under his arm, and sent it like a missile hurtling through the air. It struck the man Tom, with stunning violence, right between the shoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave a gasping sort of shout, and fell.

Whether he was injured much or little, none could tell. Natty could tell from the sound, the man’s back was likely broken on the spot. Beside her, Jim had gone very still.

Tom had no time to recover from the blow of the crutch, because now Silver was on top of him in the next moment, and had twice buried his knife up to the hilt into the man’s defenseless body.

Natty felt both hot and cold at once, seeing the man who had never touched her or her mother without tenderness, commit such violence with ease and finesse.

She looked to Jim and saw that he had fainted, so she propped herself up on her elbows and waited for him to come to.

When he did at last, Natty was just watching her father pull himself back together, righting his crutch under his arm and putting his hat upon his head.

Just before him, Tom lay motionless on the ground, but Silver didn’t seem to notice. He cleaned his blood-stained knife upon a nearby patch of grass, and the world continued to go on as it did.

The sun still shone down mercilessly upon the island and the mountain, and Natty felt strangely unbothered by the fact that she had just witnessed her father murder a man in cold blood.

Her _pai_ put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, and blew upon it several times, the shrill blast ringing out far across the thick, heated air. She knew this to be the signal, and motioned for Jim to copy her in crawling slowly back with as much silence as she could manage.

When they were far enough away as to be out of earshot or eyesight, she stood and indicated that he do the same.

“Can you run?” she asked Jim, taking in the state of him.

He furrowed his brow and nodded, though still looking a little sick, and together they took off in the first direction Natty could find that was relatively free of impossibly thick vines.

  
They eventually reached a part of the island where they stood at the foot of a little hill with two peaks, where the trees grew further apart from one another and the air smelt fresher.  
  


No sooner had they stopped to catch their breath did a figure leap from behind a copse of trees, dark and shaggy and moving like a half-man, half-beast.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO sorry for going so long without an update! 
> 
> Please forgive me :( I have been very sick for almost two weeks. 
> 
> Luckily, I've got a burst of energy and a lot of catching up to do, so here is the first of two updates I will post this weekend. 
> 
> The second I might post today, and if I end up being so inclined, there could even be a third. Please enjoy and comment, don't hesitate to scold me for such a long interval haha.


	10. Old Ben Gunn

VIII.  
  


Silver wiped the sweat of his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and swore aloud.  
  


He hated this island, and what it seemed to bring out in people.

The body of old Tom lay a little ways away, and Silver found himself coldly making a little tick on the mental docket he was keeping of potential casualties. One tick for Alan, and one for Tom.

There would likely be plenty more, and he was ready for them.  
  


Silver remembered the first man he killed, remembered it as vividly as though he’d just done it moments ago. He remembered the rage that coursed through him at the incendiary words the man had spoken, the way he’d insinuated things about Flint and insulted Silver in front of so many men in that tavern.

The bespectacled man had been quite the headache for both himself and Flint, and the moment the word _invalid_ left his thin, pale lips, Silver’s sight had gone utterly red.

He remembered, standing there on Skeleton Island, exactly how it felt when his tin cup caught Dufresne against the side of the face. He recalled the satisfying crack of bone, and how he laid into the man’s head with his peg leg, over and over, until there was nothing left of his face.

Dufresne had deserved it, Silver had thought, and still did. There hadn’t been a man more deserving of such a fate. Except, he amended, perhaps Woodes Rogers.

Silver also remembered how Madi had been so concerned, though she’d remained just as collected and queenly as ever; she had expressed to him her worry that he would get the taste for killing just as his captain had.

Silver, though twenty years have passed, remembered exactly the lie he told her.

“Last night was not an experience I am eager to repeat,” he had said.

He knew now that both of them had been well aware of his dishonesty.

He also knew he was very fortunate that no matter how much blood he had on his hands, his wife would still take his face in her hands and kiss him when he returned to her.

  
.  
  


_Past_  
  


When they’d first come to the uninhabited island, Flint had set the crew to work building a small structure and digging out the canals.

The second time, he had gone ashore with six men to stow his massive treasure hoard.

Flint had left Silver in charge of the rest of the crew as they waited for nearly five days aboard the _Walrus_ , scanning the forest’s edge for any sign of the shore party. Silver had been out of his mind with worry, and had stayed almost exclusively out on the deck until the moment he saw a single figure come out of the jungle, making long strides across the beach towards the ship.

Silver was at once relieved and stricken—the lone figure was Flint himself, and the nearer he got, Silver could see that his face was smudged with red, and his clothes were stained.

When he walked up the gangplank, the men gave him a wide berth.

No one said a word, nor asked after the six men who had gone with him.  
  


When they were alone in Flint’s quarters, Silver had asked him quietly what exactly had happened.  
  
“I had to ensure that the location of the treasure would remain a secret.” he replied.

Silver looked at the man before him with entirely new eyes, and not for the first time since they had first met.

(That first meeting felt like a lifetime ago, rather than only two short years gone by. Silver was certainly a different man altogether now, and he suspected James Flint shed identities the way snakes shed skin—easily, without fuss, and as naturally as breathing.)

And Silver hated that it made his skin feel too tight over his bones, made him tingle from head to toe, seeing Flint spattered with the blood of others. He hated that violence was so closely linked with sex in his mind, when it came to this man.

He knew, every time these days that they came together in this way, that he should put a stop to it. It could not sustain itself, this thing between them, and that grew increasingly more apparent with each day that passed in which they found themselves disagreeing on matters small and large regarding the crew.

And yet…Silver couldn’t tear himself away. He knew that if he did so, it would be the end of this John Silver whom he had become, and he wasn’t ready to leave that man behind just yet. His fate was tied to Flint’s, just as Flint’s was to his.

In that humid moment in the cabin, Flint’s eyes were more striking than usual, offset by the red of the blood across his face, and Silver wanted so badly that his teeth ached from clenching his jaw with it.

“You say you do not wish to be a monster,” he said, voice low and full of contempt “and yet here you stand, alive when six others are dead, offering no explanation other than _‘I had to.’_ ”

Flint said nothing, just held Silver’s gaze with those piercing eyes. After several long moments, he took a few steps nearer to Silver and spoke.

“And _you_ say you wish to take a wife, yet most every night you’re in here, in _my_ bed.” Flint fisted his hand in the fabric of Silver’s shirt, and Silver hated the way it made his heart race, still. “So perhaps we shouldn’t pretend as though we’re each bothered by the sins the other commits.”

Silver cursed and berated himself mentally, even as he leaned in close enough to feel Flint’s breath ghosting over his lips.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t,” he agreed, eyes falling shut as Flint closed the space between them.

John Silver, no matter how he changed or gained honor, could never deny himself that which he wanted more than anything else. All that had changed, truly, was the thing at the center of all that desire. All his want was focused on a man who was more like the eye of a storm than any mortal creature.

  
. . .  
  


_Natty_

From the side of the steep and stony hill, a spout of gravel was dislodged suddenly, and fell rattling and bounding through the vegetation.

Natty’s eyes instinctively followed in the direction of the noise, and it was then that she saw the beastly figure emerge from behind the trees. What it was, whether bear or man or ape, she couldn’t hope to tell.

It seemed dark and shaggy, and she was quite rightly startled. Jim Hawkins grabbed at her hand and held it tight, clearly frightened as well.

They were cut off upon both sides, now; behind lay the band of mutineers led by Natty’s _pai_ , and before was this lurking creature. Immediately, she began to prefer the dangers that she knew to those she knew not. Her father wouldn’t let any harm come to her, and the mutineers were all less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and, pulling Jim by his hand, indicated that they should head back in the direction of the boats.

Instantly, the figure reappeared, and, making a wide circuit, began to head them off. Natty’s heart was beating wildly in her chest, and she was very tired; though she feared that even if she had been at her best, the figure would still have bested her in speed.

The thing that may have been a man was darting from tree to tree like a deer, running on two legs like a man, and yet unlike any man she had ever seen, stooping at the waist as it ran.

It was, though, she felt certain now, a man.

Suddenly, her skin crawled with the memory of what she had heard of cannibals. She knew, in the practical part of her brain, that they were a myth created by superstitious and paranoid white sailors, but now, fear held her mind in its grip.

Still holding Jim’s hand, she began to cast about for some method of escape, and then noticed the pistol at Jim’s belt. She caught his eye, and nodded down at the gun, then they began to advance toward the creature instead of away from it.

The man was concealed behind another copse of trees, but he must have been watching them closely, because as soon as they began to move in his direction he reappeared and took a step to meet them. Then, he hesitated, drew back, came forward again, and at last, to Natty’s surprise and confusion, threw himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in supplication.

She and Jim stopped just short of him.

“Who are you?” Jim asked, beating Natty to it.

“Ben Gunn,” the man answered in a voice as hoarse and awkward as a rusty lock. “I’m poor Ben Gunn, I am, and I haven’t spoke with a Christian these last years.”

Natty could see now that he was a white man, and hear that his voice contained a trace accent of the sort possessed by the Irish sailors that sometimes came to port; what’s more, she felt certain that the name of Gunn was familiar to her.

His skin, wherever it was exposed, was quite sunburnt—it looked to Natty very painful. His pale eyes were startling against the deep red of the burn. Of all the beggar-men she had seen or imagined, this man was the chief for raggedness.

He was clothed with tatters of old ships’ canvas and old sea cloth—an extraordinary patchwork which was all held together by an odd system of various and incongruous fastenings; brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin.

About his waist, Ben Gunn wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one thing solid in his whole accoutrement.

“How many years?” Natty inquired, taken aback. “Were you shipwrecked?”

“Nay, lass,” said Ben Gunn, “marooned.”

Natty knew that word, knew what it meant for sailors, and suddenly it all slotted into place, why exactly the man’s name had rung familiar.

Ben Gunn was a crewman on the _Walrus_ , punished for some crime at the orders of Natty’s _pai_ , put ashore on a desolate island with a little powered and shot, and left behind.

“Marooned for as many years as I can remember, now,” Gunn continued, “and lived on goats since then, and berries, and oysters. Wherever a man is, says I, a man can do for himself. But, lass, my heart is sore for a Christian diet. You mightn’t—”

He stopped mid-sentence, as if seeing Natty’s face for the first time. His eyes widened, and he took a staggering step back.

“I know your face,” he pointed the finger of one filthy hand at her, shaking slightly. “I _know_ your face, I do. It was you and your man what put me here and left me to die!”

Natty shook her head.

“I swear to you, I’m not.” she shook her head emphatically, hoping to get the man to see sense. “How could I be? I’m only seventeen, likely just a child when you were marooned.”

Ben Gunn still kept his distance, eyeing her suspiciously, fearfully.

“What be your name, lass?” he asked.

“Natty,” she replied, knowing full well he’d meant her surname. “Natty Silver.”

Ben Gunn made a choking sort of gasp, and staggered back even further.

“Old Long John’s your da, is he not? Has he sent you here to finish me off as a mercy, lass? Or is it that you’re here to visit new horrors upon old Ben Gunn?”

Natty felt herself growing more exasperated with each passing second.

“I’m not going to hurt you! We’re just—”

“—we’re trying to get back to our ship, _signore_. We mean you no harm, not the _signorina_ , and not I. Please, trust us.” Jim said, stepping closer to the pitiful vagabond.

Gunn seemed placated by this, at least a little, for he came nearer again and began inspecting Jim’s clothing.

“Tryin’ to get back aboard your ship, says you?” he asked, with a new kind of slyness overtaking his dirt-smudged features “Why, now, who’s to hinder you?”

“Not you, we know,” Jim said quickly, catching Natty’s eye and squeezing her hand where he held it still.

“And right you was,” Ben Gunn cried, “now you—what do you call yourself, lad?”

“Jim.”

“Jim, Jim,” said Ben Gunn, quite pleased at this, apparently. “Well now, Jim, I’ve lived that rough as you’d be ashamed to hear of. Now, for instance, you wouldn’t think I had had a pious mother, to look at me?”

“Why, ah, no,” Jim replied with a raise of his eyebrows “not in particular.”

“Ah, well,” Gunn said, “but I had—remarkable pious. A good, fine Catholic woman. And I was a civil, pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast, as you couldn’t tell one word from another. And here’s what if come to, Jim, and it begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed gravestones! That’s what it begun with, but it went further’n that,” he continued, working himself up into a right state, “My mother told me, predicted the whole thing, the pious woman. But it were providence what put me here. I’ve thought it all out on this here lonely island, and I’m back on piety. You don’t catch me tasting rum so much, but just a thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance I have. I’m bound I’ll be good, and I see the way to. And, Jim.” he looked all round himself, and lowered his voice to a whisper, “I’m rich.”

Natty and Jim traded looks, now quite sure that the poor man had certainly gone mad in his solitude, and she supposed they both must have shown the feeling in their expressions, for he repeated the statement hotly.

“Rich! Rich, I says. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a man of you, Jim. Ah, Jim,” he grinned a manic sort of grin “you’ll bless your stars, you will, you was the first that found me!”

And at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face, and he visibly tightened his grasp on Jim’s free hand and raised a forefinger threateningly before both their eyes.  
  
“Now Jim, Natty,” he hissed “you tell me true; that ain’t Flint’s ship?” he asked.

At this point, Natty felt her shoulders relax. She thought perhaps, now, there was a way out of all this. This, she could work with, and her mind had already begun weaving the threads of a story.

“It’s not Flint’s ship, and old Flint is dead, but I’ll tell you true, as you ask me—there are some of Flint’s hands aboard, and worse luck for the rest of us.”

“Not—the man with one leg, your father?” he gasped.

“Silver?” Natty cocked her head, as if thinking about it.

“Ah, Silver!” Ben Gunn nodded, “that were his name.”

“He’s the cook, and in as much danger as we two,” she said, thinking quickly. Once they got back to the boats, her pai would have to decide what would be done about Ben Gunn, but for now it was easier to let him think that Silver had no part in the mutiny.

“Don’t lie to me,” Gunn said, dropping Jim’s hand and grabbing Natty’s wrist quite tightly. “Did Long John send you for me?”

Jim, in that moment, stepped in and then spun the whole tale of the voyage, changing a few key facts here and there, up to the predicament in which they now found themselves. Gunn listened with the keenest interest, and when the story was done, he patted Jim on the head.

“You’re a good lad, Jim,” Gunn said, as though Jim was about four or five years younger than his age. Natty snorted despite herself. “You both put your trust in Ben Gunn—Ben Gunn’s the man to do it. Do you suppose,” he added, “that your squire would prove a liberal-minded one in case of help—him being in a clove hitch such as yourselves?”

Jim told him the squire was the most liberal of men, and Natty eagerly confirmed. What she knew they both meant, was, that the squire was quite easy to frighten into doing anything.

“Ay, but you see,” returned Ben Gunn, “I didn’t mean giving me a gate to keep, and a suit o’ livery clothes, and such; that’s not my mark, children. What I mean is, would he likely to come down to the tune of, say, one thousand pounds out of money that’s as good as a man’s own already?”

“ _Sì_ , I am quite sure he would,” said Jim. “As it was, all hands were to share.”

“And, a passage home?” Gunn added, with a look of great shrewdness.

“Why,” Jim replied, “the squire’s a gentleman, _signore_! And besides, if we got rid of the others, we should want you to help work the vessel home.”

Ah,” said Gunn, pleased, “so you would.” he paused, then went on “now, I’ll tell you what, so much I’ll tell you, and no more. I were in Flint’s ship when he buried the treasure, he and six along—six strong seamen. They were ashore night on a week, and us standing off and on in the old Walrus. One fine day up went the signal, and here come Flint by himself walking out o' them woods and 'cross the beach, and his head done up in a blue scarf. The sun was getting up, and mortal white he looked about the cutwater. He’d blood all over his face, his clothes. But there he was, you mind, and the six all dead—dead and buried. How he done it, not a man aboard us could make out. It was battle, murder, and sudden death, leastways—him against six. Billy Bones was the mate, Long John was quartermaster. Flint said not a word to any of the men, though he disappeared into his cabin with Silver for the rest of the eve as was the usual.”

Natty’s ears perked up at that.

It was usual for her _pai_ to spend evenings in the captain’s quarters with Flint? She wondered, and not for the first time, what exactly had passed between the two men. She hoped that there would be time after this was all over to sit down with her _pai_ and find out.

“So, do we have an accord?” Ben Gunn asked, looking from Natty to Jim and back again.

Natty looked at Jim, who shrugged almost imperceptibly as if to say what choice do we have? Natty returned the shrug, and rolled her eyes, and together they turned back to face the old hermit.

“Aye,” said Natty, squaring her shoulders. “It would seem that we do.”  
  


Ben Gunn grinned, revealing yellowed teeth.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER TEN! AND IT'S RELATIVELY LONG(ISH)! 
> 
> I'm happy to be posting again, and I will quite possibly have ANOTHER ONE ready to go tonight or tomorrow afternoon. Thank you to everyone who is still faithfully waiting for updates, I love hearing from you all, and I promise not to abandon this. 
> 
> Now, 24 chapters to go! hahaha... (hopefully I can finish it in fewer chapters, but it will likely still be at least 20 if I did cut the length down.) 
> 
> Hooray for all the adventure!


	11. The Stockade

  
IX.

_Natty_

  
As soon as Ben Gunn saw the colors of the Union Jack fluttering against the bright blue sky, he came to a halt, stopping Natty and Jim both by their arms.

“Now,” said Gunn, “there’s your friends, sure enough.”

“Far more likely it’s my father and his men,” Natty answered.

“That!” Gunn cried, frowning. “Why, in a place like this, where nobody puts in but gentlemen of fortune, Silver would fly the Jolly Roger, you don’t make no doubt of that. No, that’s your friends. There’s been blows, too, and I reckon your friends has had the best of it. No doubt they’ve gone ashore to the old stockade, as was made years and years ago by Flint. Ah, he was the man to have a headpiece, was Flint! Barring rum, his match were never seen. He were afraid of none, not he; only Silver—your da—Silver was that to old Flint.”

Natty’s head reeled for a moment at this revelation; her _pai_ was the one man that Captain Flint had feared? She felt more certain than ever that the story her father had to tell regarding Flint and the Walrus was one that she needed to hear. She needed answers.

“Well,” said Jim, “that may be so, and so be it; all the more reason that we should hurry and join our crew.”

“Nay, lad,” returned Ben, “you, mayhap, but not the lass. You’re a good lass,” he turned to Natty and spoke in what he likely assumed was a gentle tone, “but you’re only a lass, all told. Now, Ben Gunn and your friend Jim Hawkins here are fly. Rum wouldn’t bring me there, where you’re going—not rum wouldn’t, til I see your born gentleman, and gets it on his word of honor. And you won’t forget my words: ‘A precious sight (that’s what you’ll say), a precious sight more confidence’—and then nips him.”

And then Ben Gunn pinched Jim, with an air of mad cleverness.

“When Ben Gunn is wanted, you know where to find him, Jim. Just where you found him today. And him that comes is to have a white thing in his hand, and he’s to come alone. Oh! And, you’ll say this: ‘Ben Gunn,’ says you, ‘has reasons of his own.’”

“Well, I believe we understand you,” Jim began, giving Natty a look which said he very much did not, “you have something you wish to propose, sì? You wish to see the squire or the doctor, and you’re to be found where we are finding you. _È quello_ _tutto?_ ”

Natty made a mental note to have Jim teach her some useful phrases in Italian when this was all over.

“Make it about from between noon and six bells,” Ben Gunn added.

“ _Benissimo_.” said Jim, nodding. “And now, we may go?”

“You won’t be forgetting?” Gunn inquired, rather anxiously. “Precious sight, and reasons of his own, says you. Reasons of his own; that’s the mainstay. As between man and man. Well, then”—he held fast to Jim’s arm—“I reckon you can go, Jim, you and your lass. And Jim, if you see her father, you wouldn’t go selling Ben Gunn? Wild horses wouldn’t draw it from you? No, says you. And if the pirates camp ashore, Jim, what would you say but there’d be widders in the morning?”

Here he was interrupted by a loud report, and a cannon ball came tearing through the trees and pitched in the sand, not a hundred yards from where the three of them stood talking. The next moment, each of them had taken to their heels in a different direction, though Natty doubled back to grab hold of Jim’s hand and bring him along in her own way.

  
For a good hour to come, frequent reports shook the island, and balls kept crashing through the woods. Natty and Jim moved from hiding place to hiding place, always pursued, or so it seemed to Natty, by these terrifying missiles.

Towards the end of the bombardment, though still she didn’t dare venture them in the direction of the stockade, where the balls fell with the most likelihood, Natty had begun to get her courage up again.

She resolved to move them slowly down among the shoreside trees.

The sun had just set, the sea breeze was rustling and tumbling in the jungle, and ruffling the grey surface of the anchorage. The tide, too, was far out, and great tracts of sand lay uncovered. The air, after the day’s unimaginable heat, chilled Natty through her thin shirt.

The _Hispaniola_ still lay where she’d been anchored, but sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger—the black, the skull and bones which Natty’d never had cause to fear—flying from the _Hispaniola’s_ peak. Even as she watched, mesmerized, more red flashes came one after the other, sending echoes clattering. Still one more round shot whistled through the air, the last of the cannonade.

She and Jim lie on their bellies in their hiding place, side by side, watching the bustle which succeeded the attack.

Men were demolishing something with axes on the beach near the stockade; the poor jolly-boat, as Natty later found out. Away, near the mouth of the small river, a great fire was glowing among the trees, and between that point and the ship, one of the gigs kept coming and going.

The men who’d earlier in the day been gloomy, shouted at the oars like children. Natty knew enough of these sorts of men to suspect that it was rum which lightened their moods so.

She thought, after some more time had passed, that she might take Jim and return to the stockade. Natty knew she had to get Jim somewhere that her father’s men wouldn’t find him. As of that moment, they were pretty far down on the low, sandy spit which enclosed the anchorage to the east, that which joined at half-water to Skeleton Island.

She rose to her feet and motioned for Jim to do the same, and together they saw from some distance down the spit, a high and isolated white rock rising from among the bushes.

Her quick mind never failing her, Natty was reminded of the old madman Ben Gunn’s words from earlier, about how they might find a boat there.

Then, she and Jim skirted among the woods until they’d come back up the rear shoreward side of the stockade, to be welcomed by what remained of the faithful crew.

  
They two told their story breathlessly, leaving out the fact that Natty had known of her father’s plans for mutiny, and the crew took their word as good.

She looked around herself, cataloguing her surroundings; they were in a log-house, a little cabin made of un-squared trunks of pine—the roof, walls, and floor all. The floor stood in several places as much as a foot or a foot and a half above the surface of the sand. The cabin had a porch at the door, underneath which welled up a little spring into an artificial basin of a rather odd kind—it appeared to be th kettle of iron on a great ship with the bottom knocked out, sunk to her bearings among the sand.

Little had been left inside the framework of the house, but in one far corner there was a slab of cold stone laid down in place of a hearth, and an old, rusted iron basket to keep the fire contained.

The slopes of the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been cleared of timber to build the house, and Natty could see by the stumps what a find and lofty grove had been destroyed. Most of the soil and sand had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle, a thick bed of moss and some ferns and creeping vines were still green among the sand.

Very close around the stockade—too close for defense, the others said—the wood still flourished high and dense, all a mixture of palms and kapoks and other such trees.

The cold evening breeze whistled through every crack and chink of the rude building, and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain of fine grains of sand.

Natty shivered without meaning to. Noticing this, Jim took off the jacket he’d managed to keep tied round his waist the whole length of their mad day’s adventure, and put it very carefully over Natty’s shoulders.

She didn’t thank him aloud, but let her eyes say it for her. She could not afford to be seen as little more than a weak young girl, though she also couldn’t let the remaining crew see what she was truly capable of. Jim nodded once and found Natty’s hand between them where they sat on the floor, holding it where none else could see.

In addition to the cabin's rough, unfinished feel, there was sand everywhere, like a swarm of gnats or flies in the jungle. It invaded Natty’s eyes, ground between her teeth, and she cursed the whole damn island under her breath.

The chimney was a square hole in the roof, a little part of the smoke being all that could find its way out, and the rest eddied about the house, making everyone cough and water at the eyes.   
  
Natty put her sleeved arm over her nose and mouth for awhile, breathing through the linen to try and filter out some of the smoke.

Added to the company was a man called Gray, face done up in a bandage for a cut he’d gotten breaking away from Natty’s pai’s men, and the poor old man Tom Redruth, still unburied. His body lay along the wall, stiff and stark, under the Union Jack.

If they’d been allowed to sit idle, Natty suspected that the remaining crew would have fallen into a very glum state, but Captain Smollett was never the man for that. All hands were called up before him, and he divided everyone into watches.

The doctor, Gray, and Jim for the one; the squire, Hunter, and Joyce upon the other. Natty was annoyed that she wasn’t assigned to a watch, but she bit her tongue and kept it to herself.

Tired though everyone was, two were sent out for firewood, two more to dig a grave for Redruth, and Natty was assigned to do the cooking. Jim was then put sentry at the door, and the captain himself went from one to another, attempting to keep up the crew’s spirits and lending a hand where a hand was wanted.

From time to time, he came around to Natty where she stood at the crude stove, trying her best to make a meal which was more food than sand, but the captain said nothing. She could tell he was trying to puzzle her out, to figure if she was playing the long game, or if she truly was as harmless as she no doubt appeared.

Jim came over as often as he could, with a word for Natty when he did.

“That man, _Capitano_ Smollett,” he said once, low under his breath, “is a better man than I am, than all the other men here.”

Natty only gave him a wry smile and wrinkled her nose, replying that she doubted that very much.

She smiled down at her sandy pot of porridge as he walked back to his post, red to the ears from being complimented.

  
The doctor came to her as well, standing silent for a long while before speaking.

“Is this Ben Gunn a man?” he asked finally.

“I do not know, sir,” she said. “I’m not at all sure that he’s sane.”

The doctor nodded thoughtfully. “Hawkins has said much the same. Though, I would suppose that he is certainly sane. A man who has been as long as he has biting his nails on a desert island, Miss Silver, can’t be expected to appear as sane as you or I. It doesn’t lie in human nature. Was it cheese you said he had a fancy for?”

“Yes, sir,” said Natty, trying not to roll her eyes. “It was cheese.”

And indeed it was; Ben Gunn had gone on what could only be described as a diatribe of sorts on the virtues and pleasures of cheese. Natty herself wasn’t overly fond of it, but had nodded along in order to placate the old loon.

“Well, Miss Silver,” said the doctor “just see the good that comes of being dainty in your food. You’ve seen my snuffbox, haven’t you? And you never saw me take snuff. The reason for that being,” he smirked slyly and lowered his voice to a whisper, “that I carry in my snuffbox a piece of Parmesan cheese—that is to say, an Italian cheese, very nutritious. That’s for Ben Gunn, I daresay.”

Natty had never heard of Parmesan cheese, so she wasn’t sure exactly how she was meant to react. She decided, in the end, to widen her eyes and nod agreeably, and to say to the doctor what a fine, clever idea that was.

She honestly wasn’t sure how much longer she could deal with these grown men on the ‘right’ side of the law. She suddenly felt a longing to be with her _pai_ , with her _muma_. She wanted to be around people who didn’t dither about or stand on ceremony or talk about putting fancy Italian cheeses where tobacco ought to go.

  
Before supper was eaten—and Natty was so annoyed with the quality of the food, she had to be pestered by Jim into eating any herself—they buried old Tom in the stand, and stood around him for awhile in the breeze. A good deal of firewood had been got in, but not enough to be to the captain’s liking.

The captain shook his head over it, and told everyone they “must get back to it tomorrow, and rather livelier.” Natty rolled her eyes at Jim, who snorted, and then very quickly disguised it as a cough.

When the food had been eaten, each was given a stiff glass of brandy grog, and the three chiefs got together in a corner to discuss the crew’s prospects. They looked, to Natty, rather like a small peck of hens, all crouched and squawking.

While they argued and discussed in heated whispers, Natty and Jim sat down in the furthest corner of the opposite side of the cabin, shoulders pressed flush together comfortably.

“I hardly know you at all,” Natty said after awhile, “and yet, after today, I feel there is likely nothing I couldn’t say to you.”

Jim turned a little to face her, smiling in a way that made Natty’s stomach flutter.

“ _Sì_ , _io_ _lo_ _so_ ,” he replied, finding her hand again on the floor and threading their fingers together. “you are a lucky woman to know, Natty Silver. I fear I would not have done nearly so well today, if not for you.”

Natty laughed, knowing that was the plain truth of it.

Jim Hawkins was an able sailor, and a quick thinker, certainly; that said, he had no experience at all with pirates, and even less with jungles. He was definitely lucky to have had Natty.

She wondered absently how this had become so normal in such a short span of time, holding hands with the boy next to her. She couldn’t find it in her to fight it, nor could she fight the urge to lean a little more so that her head rested on Jim’s steady shoulder.

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,” Jim sang softly, and Natty was pleasantly surprised to find that he had a voice that was more than fine.

“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” Natty finished for him, quite sleepy now that she was finally free of constant motion.

She felt the warm, solid weight of Jim’s head resting against hers, and drifted off for a little while.

.

When Natty was roused an hour or so later, it was because the three chiefs had reached their wits’ end what to do, and the stores were so dismally low that they thought they’d likely be starved into surrender long before help came.

Their best hope, it had been decided, was to kill off the mutineers until they either hauled down their flag or ran away with the _Hispaniola_. From nineteen, they were already reduced to fifteen, two others wounded and one, at least—the man shot beside the gun—severely wounded, if not dead.

Every time the crew had a crack at Silver’s men, the crew was to take it, saving their own lives with the utmost care. And, besides that, they reasoned, there were two able allies; the rum, and the climate.

As for the first, though the cabin was about a half-mile away, Natty could hear the pirates carousing and roaring on late into the night. She was sure her _pai_ was beyond exasperated now; he had never liked rowdy, drunken sailors. She wished she was with her _pai_ , yet again, missing his presence like a careful process misses a steady hand.

As for the climate, the doctor yet again felt compelled to ‘stake his wig’ that, camped where they were in the marsh and without remedies, the half of them would be on their backs before a week.

What the doctor didn’t know, of course, was that Silver had access to and the ability to make quite a few of Natty’s _muma’s_ people’s cures for many things. Antidotes to poisons, pastes to draw out infections, ointments to ward off mosquitos and other dangerous insects. If her _pai_ could find the proper plants and muds, Natty knew, he would be able to keep his men well alive.

Plus, half the mutineers were men from the islands, immune to tropical diseases in a way the English-born men were not. Natty herself was immune, and so was, she realized, Jim. It was a strange relief, knowing that Jim would not be susceptible to any foreign illnesses.

“So,” the doctor added with a smug air, “if we are not all shot down first, they’ll be glad to be packing in the schooner. It’s always a ship, and they can get to pirating again, I suppose.”

“What about the girl?” one crewman asked suddenly, and everyone turned to stare at Natty where she stood, leaning against the rough log wall.

“What _about_ the girl?” she drawled, irked enough not to remember her manners or her supposed place.

“What I mean to say is,” the man continued, looking as though he’d just laid eyes upon a chest full of treasure, “she’s the daughter of their leader, is she not? Mightn’t a man, even a pirate, be willing to surrender if he believed his only daughter to be in immediate danger?”

Before Natty had a chance to react—and she was already reaching for her knife—Captain Smollett smacked his hand against the wall, hard.

“That is quite enough of that sort of talk, man.” he spoke in a sharp tone, brow furrowed. “She’s a young lady—little more than a child, really. Using her as a ransom—as _bait_ , as you suggest is utterly reprehensible. It would go against everything that we, that _I_ stand for as a man of my station. I think perhaps you had better not speak again until you can be sure you’ll not be letting anymore idiotic notions free into the world.”

No one said anything else after that, for a long while.

Natty was irritated that she’d not been able to speak for her own sake, and a little annoyed that it had been Smollett of all people who’d come to her defense, but she was also the tiniest bit relieved that the captain was truly as honorable as he professed to be.

  
They all slept only a little, uncomfortably, against the rough wall.

  
When morning came, though it was still dark, Natty woke alone, with Jim’s jacket over her like a blanket.

Natty was still dead tired, and so was Jim, who had already gone out in search for wood to double the pile by the fire, when there came a bustle and the sound of voices.

“Flag of truce!” she heard someone say, and then, immediately after with a cry of surprise, “Silver himself! It’s Silver himself!”

  
And, at that, Natty jumped into high alert, rubbing her eyes, and ran to a loophole in the wall.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so stoked because I'm deep in the throes of inspiration. I feel like for at least a little while, I'm riding on the motivation train, and it feels GOOD. 
> 
> Also, shoutout to all the lovelies who have followed me on tumbler (i'm seawitchbaby on there) and people who have asked me stuff about my fic and so on, and to those who have signal boosted, I'm eternally flattered and grateful. 
> 
> There are some amazing works in progress for this pairing, let alone the already finished ones, and I am SO proud and flattered and humbled that some would consider my ridiculous Treasure Island rewrite to be one of their favorites. 
> 
> As always, I live for comments, seriously, and feedback! You all are great!
> 
> *the first thing in Italian that Jim says in this chapter, 'è quello tutto?' means roughly, 'is that all?'
> 
> ** the second thing is 'Si, io lo so,' which means, 'Yes, i know it."


	12. Silver's Embassy

X.  
  


Silver stood placidly by while his man waved a white flag.

  
It was a ruse, of course, but Silver needed to try and regain control over the situation—what’s more, he needed confirmation that his daughter was alive and well.

  
It was still quite early, and the coldest morning Silver had felt in a long while. The day’s heat hadn’t yet begun to creep in at the edges, and the purple-gray sky above still twinkled with fading stars.

Where he stood with his lieutenant, Silver was in dark shadow, and they waded through a knee-deep white fog which had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapor taken together told the island in as true a fashion as it deserved, Silver thought. It was a dark place haunted by the echoes of dark things that had taken place upon it. A dark, feverish, damp and damned spot.

“Keep indoors, men,” Captain Smollett was telling his men, loudly enough for Silver to hear it, his ears still keen as ever. “Ten to one, this is a trick.”

Silver willed himself not to smirk.

Then, he was hailed by the captain.

“Who goes? Stand, or we fire.”

“Flag of truce,” Silver cried, making it as convincing as he could—which was, if he said so himself, quite convincing.

The captain was in the thatched-roof porch, keeping himself smartly out of the way of a treacherous shot, should any be intended.

He turned and spoke to the men inside the cabin.

“Doctor’s watch on the lookout. Dr. Livesy, take the north side, if you please. Jim, the east. Gray, west. The watch below, all hands to load muskets. Miss Silver, remain where you are. Lively, men, and be careful.”

Silver’s heart clenched and relaxed in his chest; his daughter was safe. That was all that mattered. He could close off that part of himself once more and become the man he needed to be to carry out his task.

The captain turned to face Silver and his men.

“And what do you want with your flag of truce?” he asked, frowning out into the darkness.

Silver’s man replied, just as they’d agreed.

“Cap’n Silver, sir, to come aboard and make terms,” the man shouted.

“Captain Silver, you say? Don’t know him. Who’s he?” cried the captain. “Quite a promotion, there, Long John!”

Silver did smirk then, at that; the captain still hadn’t the faintest idea whom he was dealing with.

“It’s I, sir,” Silver answered, squaring his shoulders. “These poor lads have chosen me captain, after your desertion, sir”—and he took care to lay a particular emphasis on the word _desertion_ —“We’re willing to submit, if we can come to terms, and no bones about it. All I would ask is your word, Captain Smollett, to let me and my girl safe and sound out of this here stockade, and one minute to get out of shot before a gun is fired.”

“My man,” the captain said, “I have not the slightest desire to talk to you. Nor, as it happens, do I feel inclined to release your young daughter into your frankly questionable care at present. If you wish to talk with me, you can come, that’s all. If there’s any treachery, it’ll be on your side, and Lord help you.”

“That’s enough, captain,” Silver shouted, as cheerily as he could manage. “A word from you’s quite enough. I know a gentleman, and you may lay to that.”

The man carrying the flag, young Dick, attempted to hold Silver back, but Silver merely chuckled and slapped the boy on the back.

Then, he advanced to the stockade alone, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and surmounted the fence to drop safely to the other side. It was, he knew, an impressive trick; it was something he had mastered many years ago.

The knoll proved to be somewhat a more difficult challenge, what with the steepness of the incline, the thick tree stumps, and the soft sand. His crutch and peg did no good at all. Silver stuck to it, in spite of this, in willful silence. He felt the sweat on his brow, felt the scarred end of his stump chafing horribly at the boot, but still he kept on.

Twenty years gone by since he’d lost his leg, and still he felt he had to prove that he didn’t need it.

When at last he arrived before the captain, he saluted.

Silver was wearing the blue coat—Flint’s coat—fine as it ever was; thick with brass buttons and hanging low to his knees. He’d even put his hat on.

“Here you are, my man,” said the captain, raising his head. “You had better sit down.”   
Silver tried not to bristle at the obvious attempt to rile him.

“You aren’t going to let me inside, captain?” he raised an eyebrow. “It’s a damn cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside on the sand.”

“Why, Silver,” replied the captain, “if you had pleased to be an honest man, you might have been sitting in your galley. It’s your own doing. You’re either my ship’s cook—and then you were treated handsome—or Captain Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang while your daughter watches.”

Silver felt that darkness rising in him, familiar as though it had never left him for a moment, and he wanted to feel the crack of the captain’s jaw against his fist.

“Well, well, captain,” he returned smoothly, willing away the black thoughts for now, “you’ll have to give me a hand up, if I sit, so perhaps I’ll stand.”

“Say your piece,” the captain tipped his head slightly, and Silver was reminded intensely of Woodes Rogers, and also of how intense his dislike for Rogers had been.

“Right you were, Captain Smollett,” replied Silver. “Duty is duty, to be sure. Well, now, you look here, that was a good lay of yours last night. I won’t deny that it was a good lay. Some of you are pretty handy with a handspike-end. And I’ll not deny that my men, and perhaps even I was shaken. Perhaps that’s why I’ve come for terms. But mark my words, Captain Smollett,” Silver fixed the captain with a hard gaze “I’ll not do it twice.”

He waited for a response from the captain, but, getting none, went on.

“We’ll have to do sentry-go, and ease off the rum, to be sure. Maybe, you think we were all a sheet in the wind’s eye. Is that what you fancied? I was sober. Dog-tired, but sober, and if I’d woken a second sooner, I’d have caught you in the act. He wasn’t dead when I got to him.”

“Well?” said Captain Smollett then, cool as he could be.

All that Silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone.

“I’ve come for that treasure,” Silver said finally. “I’ve come for it, and I’ll have it—that’s my point. You would just as soon save your lives, I shouldn’t wonder, and that’s yours. You have a chart, haven’t you?”

“That’s as may be,” replied the captain.

“Oh, well, you have. I know you have.” Silver said conversationally. “You needn’t be quite so uptight about it, there’s not one particle of service in that, and you may lay to it. What I mean is, my men and I need that chart. I mean you no harm, and I never did.”

“That won’t do with me, my man,” interrupted the captain. “We know exactly what you meant to do, and we don’t care; for now, you see, you can’t do it.”

And Smollett looked at Silver calmly, proceeding to fill his pipe as nonchalantly as he pleased.

“If Abe Gray—” Silver said suddenly, remembering the man.

“Avast there!” cried Smollett. “Gray told me nothing, and I asked him nothing. And what’s more, I would see you and him and this whole island blown clean out of the water into hell first. So there’s my mind for you on that.”

Silver was more rankled than ever, but he willed himself to pull back together. He needed control, and he’d be damned if he didn’t get it.

“Like enough,” said Silver, “I would set no limits to what gentlemen might consider shipshape, or might not, as the case were. And, seeing as how you are about to take a pipe, captain, I’ll do the same.”

And he filled a pipe carved from the tusk of a great beast, one of the few things he’d kept of Flint’s, and lit it. Silver and the captain stood smoking for quite awhile, in silence, looking at each other the way two formidable predators at an impasse would. Silver hoped that Natty wasn’t watching, but he knew her too well to think that she wasn’t.

“Now,” Silver resumed, “here it is. You give us the chart to get the treasure by, and drop shooting poor seamen, and stoving of their heads in while asleep. You do that, and we’ll offer you a choice. Either come aboard along with us, once the treasure is aboard the ship, and then I”ll give you my affidavit, upon my word of honor, to clap you lot somewhere safe ashore. Or,” he continued, “if that isn’t to your precious fancy, some of my hands being rough, and having old scores, on account of hazing, then you can stay here with old Ben Gunn. Oh, I know about him. I’m the one what put him here, didn’t he tell you? Anyhow, if that be the case, then I’ll divide stores with you, man for man, and give you my affidavit, as before, to speak the first ship I sight and send them here to pick you up. You’ll not find a better offer.”

The captain spluttered wordlessly, just made several indignant sounds.

Silver raised his voice.

“And I hope that all hands in this here block-house will overhaul my words, for what is spoken to one is spoken to all. Oh, and,” he added mildly, “I’ll be taking my daughter before this fucking day is done. That is not negotiable.”

Captain Smollett rose from his seat, knocking out the sides of his pipe in the palm of left hand.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“Every last word,” Silver answered. “Refuse that, and you’ve seen the last of me but for musket balls.”

“Very good,” said the captain. “Now you’ll hear me. If you’ll come up one by one, unarmed, I’ll engage to clap you all in irons and take you home to a fair trial in England, not in the bloody savage colonies from whence you came. If you won’t, my name is Alexander Smollett, I’ve clown my sovereign’s colors, and I’ll see you all to Davy Jones. You can’t find the treasure, not one among you is fit to sail the ship, and you can’t fight us. Your ship’s in irons, Master Silver, you’re on a lee shore, and so you’ll find. I stand here and tell you so, and they’re the last good words you’ll get from me, I swear to god, I’ll put a bullet in your back when next we meet. And your daughter won’t be leaving with you.”

Silver couldn’t keep calm any longer. His fist clenched at his side, and he took as many steps as needed until he was only a few feet away from the captain.

“What’s to stop me from killing you here, where you stand, just for the sheer pleasure of it?” he asked, smiling mildly.

The captain shrugged, clearly unconcerned. Silver merely kept on smiling, and tilted his head a little, as if thinking.

“If I were Captain Flint, instead of John Silver, you’d be a bloody mess on the sand and there’d have been no civil words spoken between us at all.”

Smollett raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, and snorted.

“If _you_ were Captain Flint, then _I_ would be the King of England. You’re no Flint. And anyhow, he’s little more than a spook story told by the last of your dying kind in a pitiful attempt to strike fear into the hearts of loyal men of the Crown.”

“Did you fancy that I was just a cook, captain?” Silver smiled wider, relishing the hate he felt, the knowledge he carried of the things he had done, was capable of. “Did you honestly believe that bullshit I sold you lot about being a military man? How sweet, you did, didn't you. I was Flint’s quartermaster, and the only man that he ever feared. Flint, who feared not death, nor British justice, nor England herself, was afraid of _me_.”

Smollett said nothing, clenching his jaw and paling ever so slightly in the face.

“Why,” Silver asked softly, menacingly, “do you suppose that is? After all the hideous, ruthless things that James Flint is said to have done, what do you think it would take for a man to strike fear into that black heart?”

Silver stepped closer to the captain, who had seemed to freeze where he stood.

“So, Captain Smollett,” he squinted up at the taller man, “you may say what you like, you may do what you like, and be as smug as you please, but know this: you are holding a lit match in a locked room full of powder kegs doused in oil. One false step, and,” he sucked in a quick breath, and then grinned when it made the captain flinch.

“The ones who die will be the lucky ones,” he finished in those same soft tones, and then began to make his way back down the hill with Dick, disappearing into the thick jungle yet again.  
  


Silver hoped that Natty understood why he’d had to say those things, to be the man he was right now. He also hoped, fervently, that he would not have to do any of the horrible things that his mind was rallying for.

  
  
Feeding the darkness only made it hungrier.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this isn't even my FINAL FORMMMM
> 
> Sorry I'm just in the zone right now. One more chapter after this coming up. Wild, right??? *Inspiration*
> 
> <3


	13. Welcome

 

XI.  
  


_Past_   
  


Silver sat a ways away from the gathering throngs of Maroons, ready to mourn the impending death of their king.

Beside him was, as ever, Flint, who seemed in light spirits, all things considered.

It was a new, strange dimension to their already strange relationship—this Flint who made wry jokes and actually teased Silver. It was, Silver realized, Flint’s version of flirting, and it was wholly unnerving and not at all unwelcome.

When Flint would turn and look sidelong at him, squinting and keeping his mouth pushed down at the corners, Silver now knew that it was the way Flint tried to get a rise out of him, to good-naturedly make Silver want to shove him in annoyance and pull him close all at once.

They were very firmly _not_ talking about whatever it was that was beginning to blossom between Silver and Madi Scott—Silver had no idea if anything would even come of it, and Flint, who had clearly noticed the potential something, would likely rather impale himself on a dull sword than ask Silver about it. They had far more pressing matters at hand.

Charles Vane was likely dead, Hornigold would come back with reinforcements, and there was a very real possibility of the Spanish coming for them as well.

  
When he’d told Flint he wasn’t sure if the older man’s words were a warning against the growing darkness inside of Silver, or a welcome into its folds, Flint had wrinkled his nose and shrugged.

“What do _you_ think?” he said, smirking. “Why can’t it be both?”

Silver groaned in halfhearted frustration.

“You love doing that, don’t you? Talking in fucking riddles and never giving me a straight answer,” he glared at Flint, who rewarded him with a brief flash of real smile.

“I do nothing of the kind,” replied Flint, furrowing his brow and settling his expression back into his usual one. “I merely offer you my wisdom—something you should be thanking me for, if we’re being honest—it’s not my fault if you’re easily riled by it.”

Silver made an affronted noise, and Flint stood, offering Silver a hand up as he did.

“I think it’s becoming increasingly clear,” Silver said, disgruntled as much as he was feeling a rush of arousal, “that contrary to previous declarations, it is _you_ who is an utter shit, not me.”

And he turned on his heel to leave, equal parts flustered and pleased with himself.

“But who’ll ever believe you if you tell them?” Flint called after him, and Silver closed his eyes and willed himself to keep walking.

If Flint covered in blood and sweat, talking madness and holding an entire crew’s fate in his hands was hard to resist, then this Flint who was very nearly playful, friendly even outside their couplings, was impossible to.

  
.  
  


Silver found himself with arms full of Madi, she crying into his shoulder, finally unable to hold all her emotions inside.

He struggled for a moment with it—he’d never comforted a woman this way, never been there for someone whose beloved parent was dead—but then brought his arms up to hold her.

They stood like that for a long time, with her quietly sobbing, soaking the fabric of Silver’s shirt through with her tears, and he standing as steady as he could, stroking her hair and rubbing soothing circles on her back.

She smelled… _good_ , incredibly good, like nothing Silver could name. Underneath the normal sweat-scent that everyone had, Madi smelled like something lush and green and growing, like fresh growth and clear water.

It was so different from the way Flint smelled, and Silver hated himself for immediately jumping to make comparisons of the two. Flint smelled of the sea and brine that they all did, but also like warm tobacco leaves and something smoky and sweet that Silver couldn’t ever quite put his finger on.

He knew, in that moment, that he wanted to kiss Madi as much as he wanted to kiss Flint.   
  
It wasn’t as dizzying a revelation as he might have thought; it could have, he thought, come at a better time, though.   
  
This could go two ways, he knew: it could either go nowhere with Madi, and Silver could keep on doing whatever it was he and Flint were doing, and no one would be harmed in the end except for probably Silver himself.   
  
On the other hand, if Madi chose to act on whatever had sparked between her and Silver—and it was ultimately her choice, for Silver wouldn’t dare to make the first move—then things could become incredible messy very quickly.

Silver could try to hide each from the other, if he ended up down that path, but that would be the worse. He could tell each of the other one, with an absolute unknown as to the response of either. Silver did not know what the Maroons did and did not find acceptable, but he didn’t want to risk the knowledge of his relationship with his captain becoming a problem for them both as long as they were on the island.

He also had no idea what Flint truly felt for him, and whether he would be bothered to share Silver, or if he’d rather Silver went on his way if he really wanted to bed someone else.

It made his head spin and swim, all the potential decisions and outcomes, as many and varied as Silver could dream up. He firmly resolved to bury any sort of feelings he may have for Madi, at least until the battle for Nassau was well over, and then _if_ he survived, he could deal with it, whatever _it_ was.

  
.

  
That night, in the cabin loaned to them by the Maroons which they pretended not to share, Flint brought Silver to the edge nearly a dozen times without letting him finish, turning Silver into a panting, pleading mess beneath his captain.

Flint grinned down at him, finally slicking his hard cock with oil and pushing slowly inside of Silver where he was loose from Flint’s fingers and tongue, and Silver grabbed at Flint’s arms just for something to hold.

“You’re beautiful like this, John,” Flint breathed into Silver’s neck, sucking a mark into the place behind Silver’s ear that made him weak. “Will you come for me, John? Can you come just on my cock, or do you need me to—”

Silver didn’t need any help. He cried out, only to have it swallowed by Flint, who covered Silver’s mouth with his own in a fierce kiss as Silver spilled his hot seed between them.

Flint slowed his thrusts down until they were agonizingly slow, grinding his hips so Silver felt every inch of him. Oversensitive and wrung-out as he was from his orgasm, Silver whined and spread his thighs further apart, digging his fingers into Flint’s muscled back to try and make him go faster.

Flint chuckled into Silver’s ear, low and filthy.

“Is there something you want, John? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how to use your words,” the captain smiled against Silver’s neck, the head of Flint’s cock brushing against the place inside Silver that made him cant his hips and bite back a moan. “You used to be _so_ mouthy, I used to imagine making you take my cock into that pretty mouth just to make you shut up.”  
  
Silver growled and dug his blunt nails in harder to the flesh of Flint’s bare back.

“James, _please_ ,” he gritted out, feeling an improbable second orgasm beginning in him again. “Please, just—faster, I need _more_ , please.”

“See, now, was that so hard?” Flint asked, grinning again. “I’ll take care of you, you know I will.”

And, true to his word, Flint sped up the pace of his thrusts, clearly forestalling his own release just to make Silver come again. That didn’t take long; Silver’s second orgasm was ripped from him, and the cry he let out was impossible to stifle. All he said, in his moment of overwhelming, blinding climax, was _James_.

“ _Fuck_ , John Silver, the things you do to me,” Flint rasped, and then drove his hips hard, one last time, coming in hot pulses inside of Silver.

He collapsed on top of Silver, right onto the sticky mess of Silver’s drying come, and they lay like that for a short while before pulling apart with a noise that had long since ceased to embarrass either one of them.

  
After they’d cleaned themselves up, Silver felt exhausted and satisfied as he had rarely ever felt in life. At least, before Flint had started fucking him.

They slept together on a cot meant for one man, shirtless and sticky with the island’s unrelenting humid heat, and before they put the lamps and candles out, Flint placed a hand on Silver’s cheek and captured his lips in a kiss so tender it made Silver’s heart stutter in his chest against his will.

It took him only a short while, that night, to fall into sleep’s comfortable arms, but Silver still found time to worry and wonder and suppose in that short time.

He wondered what had changed between he and Flint yet again, to allow for this new level of comfort and lightness. It seemed to Silver, that something had happened, something which had Flint feeling increasingly at ease in Silver’s presence.

Silver hoped that it was not the fact that he himself was beginning to give in to his own darkness, but he knew better than to hope too hard.

Flint was likely feeling relieved of the company, excited, perhaps, that he could insight such thoughts and feelings in someone else. It wasn’t a secret, to Silver at least, that Miranda Hamilton had never been keen on Flint’s murderous, vengeful urges. She had tried her best to convince him of other options, and when that failed, turned a blind—if displeased—eye to any activities of Flint’s which she had disapproved of.

Silver was something altogether new for Flint; a partner who not only complemented his qualities, but one who also felt those same urges rising up in him. Silver was unconsciously becoming, though becoming what, he did not know.   
  
Knowing that Flint potentially saw him this way was intoxicating in the most dangerous way; Silver needed to be more careful than ever not to let himself be drawn in any further than he already was into Flint’s impossible labyrinth of a soul.

Silver promised himself that he would not be swayed by Flint’s changing attitudes toward him.

  
He had, over the years, promised a lot of people—far more important than himself—a great many things.

  
He had also, as he had reminded himself a great many times, been lying.   
  


 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short flashback chapter with some smut, since this fic has been lacking it for a few chapters! 
> 
> Leave me some lovin' while I toil away at the next update! Also, please talk me out of posting like two more chapters tonight, make me wait until I'm SUPPOSED TO UPDATE, ON SUNDAY, AFTER I'VE WATCHED MY RECORDING OF THE FINALE AND WEPT. 
> 
> (you all are the best. I'm in the ZONE. I'm punching raindrops n' shit right now. I sang 'ah forse lui..sempre libera' from La Traviata today for my vocal coach and he actually was jaw-dropped and told me it was going to be the piece that opens doors for me bc I nailed it. I am flying REAL HIGH. Positive energy makes more positive energy for this little mermaid!)


	14. The Battle & The Problem of the Map

  
XII.

 __  
Natty  
  


As soon as her _pai_ disappeared, Captain Smollett, who had been closely watching him, turned towards the interior of the house to find not a man among the crew to be at his post. It was the first time Natty had seen the captain truly angry.

His nostrils flared and his eyes seemed to blaze with what Natty knew to be hatred of her father, and the captain roared at them to return to their tasks.

Natty was hardly bothered by what she had witnessed through her peephole in the wall; she knew what her father was capable of, and that the captain had only egged it on and brought that rage upon himself.

Still, she worried for her own sake as well as for her _pai_ —if the captain would not allow her to leave his keeping, she would have to try and escape, regardless of the consequences.

“My lads,” said the captain after a long, thoughtful silence, “and Miss Silver, I’ve given Long John a broadside. I pitched it in red-hot on purpose, and before the hour’s out, I believe that we shall be boarded, as he said. We’re outnumbered, I needn’t tell you that, but we fight in shelter, and with discipline. I’ve no manner of doubt that we can best them, if you choose.”

On the two short sides of the house—the east and west—there were only two loopholes; on the south side where the porch was, there were two again, and on the north side, five. There was a round score of muskets for the seven crewmen, (they didn’t need to tell Natty that she wouldn’t be allowed to hold one), and the firewood had been built into four makeshift tables upon which to put ammunition and a loaded musket each.

In the middle, the cutlasses lay ranged.

“Toss out the fire,” said the captain matter-of-factly, “the chill is past, and we can’t be having all this smoke in our eyes.”

The iron fire basket was carried bodily out by Mr. Trelawney, and the embers smothered beneath the sand.

“Hawkins hasn’t had his breakfast,” Natty said suddenly, thinking of how she might buy time to forge her own plan.

“Hawkins, help yourself and back to your post to eat it,” agreed the captain. “Lively now, my lads; you’ll want it before you’ve done. Hunter, serve a round of brandy to all hands.”

The captain went on to ramble about his plan of defense, and go over it with the doctor and the squire. Jim took a serving of porridge and came to stand next to Natty so they might talk without being overheard.  
  


“What are we going to do?” he whispered, pushing the unappealing food around in his bowl.

Natty raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, it’s _we_ all of a sudden? I thought you were loyal to England and all that,” she regarded him coolly, drawing herself up to her full height.

Jim shook his head.

“I’m beginning to see that there’s more going on than I first imagined. And,”—he ducked his head bashfully, as was his habit—“I don’t think I want to be on the side that is opposite yours.”

Natty very pointedly ignored the way that made her feel warm all over.

“Right, then.” she said, nodding to herself. “We’ll have to think of something quick-smart, then, before all goes to hell.”

Jim cocked his head, thinking. After a moment, he may as well have had an exclamation mark above him, for all his expression showed that he’d had an idea.

“What if,” he leaned in a little closer, dropped his voice a little lower, “we were to slip away during the fray? We could easily avoid the gunfire if we were careful, and then we could hide out elsewhere and—”

“—and look for that boat that Gunn’s got! Ah, Hawkins, you’re brilliant!” Natty whispered excitedly, suddenly much more optimistic for their prospects than she was a moment ago.

They agreed upon a signal for when the time came, and Jim went back to his post at once, under the glaring eye of the captain.  
  


As Smollett had said, the chill was past.

No sooner had the sun climbed above the girdle of trees, it fell upon them with all its force and drank up all moisture that had hung in the air.

Soon, the sand was baking, and the resin melting in the logs of the block-house. Jackets and coats were flung aside; shirts thrown open at the neck, and rolled up to the shoulders, and some were even cast aside.

The men stood there, each at their post, in a fever of heat and anxiety.  
  


An hour passed.  
  


“Hang them!” said the captain. “This is as dull as the doldrums. Gray, whistle for a wind.”

And just at that moment came the first news of the attack.

“If you please, sir,” said Joyce, “if I see anyone, am I to fire?”

“I told you so already,” snapped the captain testily.

“Thank you, sir,” returned Joyce, with the same quiet civility.

Nothing followed for a time, and Natty closed her eyes and thought about her home on her island. She thought about the lush, tropical flowers that bloomed in their little yard, the fruit bearing trees which grew along the edges. She missed the smells of her muma’s cooking, and the busy work of the shop. She longed for her bed and her simple shift dresses, to go barefoot on the cool stone and wood floors of their cottage.

Suddenly, out of the blue, Joyce whipped up his musket and fired.

The report had scarcely died away when it was repeated and repeated on the double form without in a scattering volley, shot behind shot, like a string of geese from every side of the enclosure. Several bullets struck the log-house, but not one entered, and as the smoke cleared away, the stockade and the woods around it looked as quiet and empty as before.

Not a palm frond waved, not the gleam of musket barrel betrayed the presence of the mutineers.

“Did you hit your man?” asked the captain.

“No, sir,” replied Joyce. “I believe not, sir.”

“Next best thing to tell the truth,” muttered the captain. “Load his gun, Hawkins. How many should you say there were on your side, doctor?”

“I know precisely,” replied Livesy curtly. “Three shots were fired on this side. I saw the three flashes—two close together, one farther to the west.”

“Three!” repeated Smollett incredulously. “And how many on yours, Mr. Trelawney?”

But this was not so easily answered.

There had been so many what had come from the north—seven by the squire’s computation, and eight or nine, according to Gray. From the east and west only a single shot had been fired. It was plain, therefore, that the attack would be developed from the north, and that the other three sides were only to be annoyed by a show of hostilities.

Natty mentally began to calculate how exactly she and Jim might get round to the east or west side, and which side would be the wiser option while the captain refused to change his arrangements.

If the mutineers succeeded in crossing the stockade, he argued, they would take possession of any unprotected loophole, and shoot everyone down like rats in their own stronghold.  
  


Suddenly, with a loud cry, a little pack of pirates leaped from the woods on the north side, and ran straight on the stockade. At the same moment, the fire was once more opened from the woods, and a rifle ball sang through the doorway, knocking the doctor’s musket to bits.

The boarders swarmed over the fence like monkeys, and Natty watched through her little peephole, transfixed.

Squire and Gray fired again and again, felling three of the pirates, one of whom leapt up and fled into the woods, disappearing into the trees.

Two had bit the dust, Natty observed, one had fled, four had made good their footing inside the stockade; while from the shelter of the woods, seven or eight men supplied with several muskets each, kept up a hot (though useless) fire on the log-house.

The four who had successfully boarded made straight before them for the building, shouting as they ran, and the men among the trees shouted back to encourage them. Several shots were fired, but, such was the hurry of the marksmen, not one appeared to have taken effect.

In a moment, the four pirates had swarmed up the mound and were upon the log-house.

The head of Job Anderson, the bosun, appeared at the middle loophole.

“At ‘em all hands—all hands!” he roared, in a voice like thunder.

At the same moment, another pirate grasped Hunter’s musket by the muzzle, wrenched it from his hands, plucked it through the loophole, and with one stunning blow, laid the man senseless on the floor.

Natty took several steps back from her place, trying to figure out where next she might go.

Meanwhile, a third, running unharmed all around the house, appeared suddenly at the doorway and fell with his cutlass on the doctor.

The log-house was full of smoke, and the cries and confusion which followed could only be described as chaos.

Natty snatched a cutlass from the pile, and someone who was reaching for one at the same time, cut her quick across the knuckles. She barely felt it, and she sprinted for the door and out into the sunlight.

Someone was close behind, and she turned to see that it was Jim, holding a cutlass of his own.

Right in front of them, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and, just as Natty’s eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard and sent him sprawling on his back with a great slash across the face.

“Round the house, lads! Round the house!” cried the captain, and Natty noted a change to his voice.

  
Ignoring the commands of the man who was not truly her captain, Natty jerked her head in the direction of the woods where there was the least danger, and together she and Jim made for cover as quickly as they could.

There, they lay in the brush while bugs crawled on the ground beneath them, and waited for the fire to cease and someone to announce a winner.

  
When at last it seemed to quiet, Natty and Jim made their way through the jungle, taking care to keep themselves well-hidden. After nearly twenty minutes of this, when they had come to a clearing on a side of the island they’d not yet visited, they stopped to rest.

Natty wished yet again for the simple comfort of her home, of her parents’ constant presence. She wanted someone to take her braids out; she was tired of them, and her head itched, and she wanted to let her natural curls and frizz do what it wished to do. She wanted to feel her _muma’s_ nimble fingertips on her scalp, massaging out all the tension from being pulled in the braids for so long.

Jim brought her out of her little homesick daydream with a tap on the shoulder. When Natty turned to ask him what was the matter, he merely grinned, shrugged, and handed her a folded piece of paper.

“That’s not what I think it is,” she said slowly, unfolding it carefully, body thrumming with excitement.

It was, indeed, the chart needed to locate the treasure of Skeleton Island, the treasure that Natty’s _pai_ knew to be hidden somewhere on this place they had come to.

“How the bloody hell did you manage to get hold of it?” Natty asked, poring over the page with interest.

She was rather impressed with Jim’s ability to snatch the chart from under the noses of those in charge—and amidst all the hectic confusion of the battle, no less.

Jim laughed.

“I remembered where Smollett had put it, you know? I remembered, and then when all the smoke and the gunfire, I thought, ‘who is going to miss it, with everything else happening?’ So, I took it.” he shrugged, as if it were punctuation.

“Jim Hawkins, you’d make a dead brilliant pirate,” Natty told him, grinning broadly. “Now, we just have to figure out what to do next.”

They sat down on a patch of sandy grass, taking inventory of what weapons they had been able to grab. Jim had two pistols, some powder and shot, as well as the cutlass. Natty had a cutlass, and her knife, so Jim passed one of the guns over to her.

The sun was high still, but would soon start its steady decline until disappearing below the horizon in a pool of bloody red over the ocean. The heat was a dry sort of heat, and Natty inwardly groused, for she much preferred when it was humid. At least then, it didn’t chap her lips so fiercely, or parch her throat so much quicker.

They drank what little clean water was left in Natty’s flask, and set about deciding what to do.

Jim said he supposed they might try to find Natty’s father, but Natty wasn’t entirely sure; she didn’t want to run into some of her pai’s men in their search for him. Several of those men couldn’t give less of a shit as to whose daughter Natty was. She shivered at the thought.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to run into that crazy old Gunn,” Jim said, making a face. “I definitely wouldn’t. He seems to want to touch me all the time.”

“Welcome to what a woman has to deal with every day,” Natty snorted, still studying the map of the island. “Anyhow, we’ll need to find my _pai_. I can’t make heads nor tails of this chart, but he’ll be able to.”

They decided in the end to wait a little while, to catch their breath and regain what energy they could, before heading off in the direction Natty felt certain that the pirates had made their camp.  
  


. . .  
  


Silver paced the deck of the _Hispaniola_ , Captain Flint preening on his shoulder, back and forth for what seemed like hours.

  
Then, suddenly, there came a shout from one of the men, alerting everyone aboard of a small vessel sighted alongside the ship.

Silver clomped over to the side to look over the rail, and in the dying light of the setting sun, he could just make out two figures in an incredibly unwieldy looking coracle—one of them being his Natty.

“What are you waiting for, you lazy fucks, help them aboard!” he shouted, his words being echoed by the parrot.

When Natty and her companion—Jim Hawkins, and _why_ wasn’t Silver the least bit surprised?—had been safely brought aboard, Silver wasted no time in crushing his daughter in an embrace.

“You mad thing, terrible cruel little woman,” he muttered into her hair as he held her tightly. “What an awful thing to do, making your old father worry so.”

Natty squeezed him back just as tightly, and Silver’s bone-weariness seemed to ease considerably.

When they parted, Silver could see that his daughter looked exhausted. Her eyes were shadowed, and her cheekbones were even sharper than usual, from lack of proper food.

“To bed with you,” he said, in the voice he used to use when she was small and being ornery. “I’ll not hear a word against it, my pearl. To the galley, to sleep.”

“But, _pai_ ,” she groaned, though she swayed a little on her feet where she stood.

“Natália Maria da Graça, you _will_ get your bony self off to bed this very minute.” Silver frowned at her, and she sighed melodramatically.

“ _Fine_ ,” she said, and shuffled off in the direction of the hatch leading down to the forecastle deck. The parrot immediately took off after her, in a flurry of feathers, to perch on Natty’s shoulder instead.  
  


Silver then turned his attentions to the young man still standing before him.

“I didn’t figure you for a mutineer,” he said amiably.

Hawkins frowned, then looked Silver in the eyes, unwavering.

“That is because I’m not. I only stayed with Natty because—”

“—I’ll thank you not to finish that sentence, boy.” Silver interrupted him hurriedly. “But now, Natty is safe with me, and you tell me you are not on my side. If you’re not on my side, then, you realize I must assume that you are on the side of my enemies. What do you say to that?”

Hawkins appeared to need not a moment to think, and he pulled a folded scrap of paper from the pocket of his coat and held it tightly.

“This is what you want, _sì_?” he asked Silver, still refusing to break their eye contact. “The map to find the treasure.”

Silver allowed his face to give nothing away, but he stepped forward toward the boy, who suddenly was flush against the rail, holding the square of paper out over it.

“If I give this to you, you’ll kill me,” Hawkins said, “and don’t insult me by pretending that is not the case. The way I see it,” he continued, still glaring at Flint, “I have few choices. I can promise to guide you, tell you bit by bit what’s on the map, or I can give it to you right now. Either way ends with my throat on the end of your cutlass.”

Silver was immediately struck by the irony of the situation, but he pushed that aside for the moment.

“I don’t want to kill you, Jim,” Silver reasoned, pitching his voice in a manner that might be soothing, “really, I don’t. Surely you can understand why it is that I have to, though, can’t you, boy?”

Hawkins shrugged, and then, as if making a very casual, unimportant decision, released the paper from his hand over the side of the ship.

Silver choked out a growl as he watched the paper flutter briefly on the breeze, just far enough to be well and truly out of reach, and then sailed happily down into the darkening sea.

“You little— _shit_ ,” he spluttered, seething and rounding on the boy. “Why the fuck would you do that? What’s to stop me from killing you now?”

“I memorized it,” Hawkins said evenly, raising his chin a little in defiance. “I would wager my memory against anyone, I know that mine will always win.”

Silver stood, inches away from the boy, hand raised in a fist, and then started to laugh.

He knew some of his men were still on deck, and could see and hear quite plainly what was happening, but Silver couldn’t help it.

It was just so bloody fitting, wasn’t it? That the very thing which set Silver’s own career in piracy in motion would come back to bite him quite pointedly on the arse.

It fucking figured, Silver thought, leaning on his crutch as he laughed still. Hawkins seemed utterly poleaxed by the whole thing—and of course he was, he had no idea what the hell was going on. He probably thought Silver’d gone stark raving mad.

“Very well, Jim,” he said, after he’d caught his breath a little, clearing his throat before speaking. “That’s all very well, I suppose. A clever play by a skilled opponent. I suppose you’re tired too?”

The boy hesitated, still looking at Silver as though he’d grown a second head, then nodded.

“That’s fine, son,” Silver nodded, feeling absolutely like he’d fallen into some sort of strange comedy of errors. “That’s fine. Get yourself down to the galley, take a rest in my hammock, we’ll talk about the map in the morning.”

Hawkins made a face, then did as he was told, disappearing across the deck and down the hatch.  
  


Silver himself went back to the captain’s cabin, ignoring the confused stares of his men, where he proceeded to sag against the wooden desk and laugh himself sick.

  
“He memorized it,” Silver gasped between peals of silent laughter. “Of course he fucking did.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a maniac. I do not honestly know what has happened to me. 
> 
> I'm posting this, the fourth update of the day, before I do my damn yoga and go to bed. 
> 
> I love everyone who is leaving me feedback! I love everyone who is reading along and just lurking! I love you all! 
> 
> Seriously, nothing motivates me more than rewards (i'm like a dog) and hearing all the wonderfully kind things you have all said about this is incredibly driving. 
> 
> That said, enjoy this new chapter! I loved writing it!


	15. Revelations

  
XIII.

  
Silver waited in his cabin for a knock that he wasn’t absolutely certain would come.

When the sun had still not yet risen up from its watery bed, though, there was a purposeful rap of knuckles against the cabin door.

“Come in,” he called aloud, and Jim Hawkins stepped into the captain’s quarters.

The boy looked like he’d slept well; his hair was a wild mess, and his cheek held the imprint of the fabric of his shirtsleeve where he’d likely rested against it in the night. Silver could not ignore how very young the young man before him was.

Captain Flint sat on Silver’s shoulder, preening her plumage and crooning softly. Her talons dug gently into the fabric of his coat, which was so covered in dust and clay that it hardly was recognizable anymore.

“So,” he said, nodding to the chair across from the desk at which he sat, “here’s Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers. Dropped in, eh? Well, sit down, boy.”

As Hawkins sat down, rubbing sleep from his eyes, Silver began to fill a pipe. He liked having something to do with his hands when he spoke to people; it helped him to remain steady.

“So,” he began again once his pipe was lit, “here you are, and smarter even than I had originally supposed. I’ll say this for you, Jim, I can’t help but like you, in spite of your decision to destroy the map.”

Hawkins sat silently, but Silver was certain that was nearly completely due to tiredness. The boy’s shoulders slumped, and his gaze was still bleary.

“You remind me of myself, at your age,” Silver went on, pausing to draw on his pipe and exhale. “And what’s more, you made sure my Natty was returned to me in one piece, and no worse for wear, and that,” he nodded at Hawkins, “is no small thing.”

“ _Mi_ _spiace_ , _Capitano_ ,” Hawkins said, after yawning largely into his shirtsleeve, “but I can’t tell if you are going to kill me or not.”

Silver snorted. He had to admire the boy’s straightforward nature.

He pretended to think about it, taking a long draw on his pipe and blowing the thick smoke out his nose before answering.

“No,” Silver drawled finally, waving a hand dismissively. “Not as such, no. I need you to lead me to the treasure, Jim. Normally, I’d have your throat cut not a minute after you did that, but as I said, I am rather fond of you. As is my daughter.”

After a long moment, Hawkins frowned and sat up a bit straighter in his chair.

“This treasure has some greater importance to you,” he said carefully, eyeing Silver warily. “You’re no more friends with any of these men than you are with Squire Trelawney.”

Silver chuckled lowly, setting aside his pipe.

“You’re sharp, Jim, very sharp. Tell me, did my Natty tell you anything about me, or about the treasure, whilst the two of you were on your island adventure the other day?”

Hawkins frowned further, and shook his head.

“ _Signorina_ Natty doesn’t know the true reason behind your mission, either. I am sure of that,” he said, shifting a little in his seat.

Silver wanted to smack his head against the desk, or the wall, or any hard surface within immediate reach. He wanted to be back at home, with his wife and his daughter. He was just so fucking tired.

“Perhaps I shall tell you, Jim, what do you think of that?” he fixed the boy with a look of vague appraisal. “Perhaps, Jim, if I tell you what lays below the madness driving me in this, you’ll stop eyeing me like I’m a monster.”

“You’re far more complicated than a monster, _signore_ ,” Hawkins said simply. Silver sat in stunned silence for several moments while the words sunk in.

  
There were a few hours until dawn, until things would resume and plans would need to be drawn, and Silver pinched the bridge of his nose as he contemplated his next move.

He longed for a strong drink, but knew there was no comfort to be found in cups. Sighing deeply, Silver caught Hawkins’ gaze and held it.

“What do you know of Captain Flint?” he asked evenly.

The boy shrugged.

“Apart from that it is the name of your bird,” he nodded toward the parrot, “not very much. He was a captain, and you were his quartermaster. Ben Gunn told us that.”

Silver nodded thoughtfully.

“I was his quartermaster, that’s true. Did Ben Gunn tell you that I was Flint’s lover, as well?” he spoke in the same conversational tone he always did when he was trying to give absolutely nothing away.

To his credit, Hawkins only looked the slightest bit surprised.

“No, I don’t suppose he’d have told you that. It isn’t the sort of thing you really tell people, is it? Imagine if everyone outside the crew knew that the most feared pirate in the Caribbean was a sodomite.” he tapped his fingers on the surface of the desk. “I did a lot of dark things during my time with Flint. He had been consumed by his own darkness, and he welcomed me into its waiting void.”

Hawkins’ face was nearly unreadable. Silver was impressed.

“Why?” Hawkins asked.

“Why did I let him mold me into something entirely other than what I was when first I came to be in service to James Flint?” Silver cocked his head, bemused. “Or, why did I let him fuck me?”

Hawkins’ mouth flattened into a straight line, and his eyes took on an annoyed squint.

“Why did Flint become the way he was, like you say, dark?” he asked, rolling his inky eyes as though Silver was, of the two of them, the most exasperating person in the room.

Silver looked down at his hands where they rested on the desk, palms down. They were still long-fingered, quick hands. Thief’s hands, though they had lately begun to show their age in calluses and lines.

“Because,” he said with a sigh, “before there was Captain Flint, there was James McGraw.”

And he began the whole story, from the beginning, hoping that it was alright that he told some of the story that didn’t belong to him.   
He managed to keep his voice steady all the way up until the end, when he told the enrapt boy across from him about Flint’s lonely, half-mad end.

Of course, he left out plenty. There were things that weren’t meant to be shared by anyone other than himself and Flint. When he finished, he found that the look on Jim Hawkins’ face was one of sympathy.

  
“You are doing this, then, as an apology,” he told Silver. “You are doing it to say ‘I love you,’ and to say ‘I’m sorry,’ so that you can put your ghosts to sleep.”

Silver smiled sadly.

“I suppose I am,” he replied.

Jim Hawkins nodded to himself, then told Silver, “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I didn’t think you would, Jim. You’re a good lad.”

“Are you still not going to kill me?”

“I promise,” Silver sighed, truthful as he could be, “I won’t kill you. Now run along, see if Natty’s up yet.”

Hawkins rose to leave, stopping at the door to turn back and look at Silver once more.

“ _Capitano_?” he said, hesitant.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, _che hai perso il tuo amante_.” Hawkins said, then left, closing the door behind him.

He’d offered no translation, but Silver didn’t need one.

  
 _'I’m sorry for your loss'_ sounded much the same in any language.

  
. . .

_  
Past_

  
“I can’t,” Silver said, the words feeling like they’d been torn from him against his will. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t _be_ _this_ anymore. Not even for you.”

Flint looked at him, and Silver was sure that he would never again in a hundred years see such raw pain on anyone’s face again. He hated seeing it on this face, hated being the one who put it there.

The time that passed before either of them moved or spoke was immeasurable. Silver’s heart thudded against his ribs, his stomach roiling with his anxiousness; he was afraid, had been afraid to come here and do this.

“I have a wife, and a home, and you—you _consume_ me, James. Do you not see it? You have the greatest share of me, and still you are unhappy that you can’t have all. You’ve got my soul, and it isn’t enough for you.”

Flint still said nothing, sitting there, his cup of rum still, for once, untouched.

“We do nothing but feed each other’s demons, James. You…” Silver faltered, throat tight. “You are too far gone, I fear.”

“But you still have a chance to come out of it,” Flint finished, in his rough voice, the thought that Silver could not bring himself to aloud. It hurt more than he could have dreamed it would.

His throat was still tight as he swallowed, so Silver nodded instead of speaking. He didn’t know what would happened when he came here to do this, but he wasn’t prepared to feel as though his heart was being cut from his chest.

“John,” Flint began, and he sounded so tired, so defeated, that for a mad second, Silver wanted to stumble over himself trying to take it all back, to fix it. “Without you, I have nothing left to keep my demons at bay.”

Silver knew what he meant. He knew that as soon as he parted company from Flint for good, that the captain would seek out trouble, and danger. He knew that when he walked away, the man who would step into his place was likely Billy, who had changed into someone unrecognizable. Billy had gone mad himself, craved the blood of others on his hands too much to be trusted. Billy still hated Flint, and idolized him all the same.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this,” Silver said finally, feeling those words to be woefully inadequate.   
  
“I understand, John.”

“I know that your heart will always belong to another,” Silver said, thinking briefly of Thomas, the man he’d only ever seen once, in an oil portrait. He closed his eyes as the tears slid down his cheeks against his will. “But perhaps it will bring your some small comfort to know that mine will always belong to you.”

The silence that stretched on between them was deafening. Silver thought he might scream, if only to break it.

  
Then, after an eternity, came Flint's reply.

“So be it, then.”

Silver wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand as he turned away, turned his back on the look on Flint's face. He tried very hard, and failed, not to think about the way he felt like he’d just condemned Flint to death.  
  


He left Flint without another word spoken between them, too raw and open in his wounds to be able to bear any longer in Flint’s presence. When he reached the little bungalow he lived in with Madi, he closed himself inside their bedroom and wept.

When his head throbbed, when his throat ached, and he had no tears left, Silver realized that he had killed a man that day.

It just was not the man he’d originally presumed.

  
He had, he realized, been the second and final death of the man called James McGraw. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo, I was so destroyed by the finale (and by the unfortunate no-homo vibes I feel the show runners have put between Silver and Flint) that I couldn't write for a few days. 
> 
> IN MY STORY, IT'S CANON BECAUSE WE DESERVE IT. 
> 
> I don't even want to contemplate if my biggest fear, which is Flint falling in unrequited love with Silver and acknowledging it openly, actually happens next season. My heart cannot take that. 
> 
> But anyway! Enjoy this angst heavy interlude before we get to some more action type stuff, and the TREASURE. 
> 
> Leave me love, it keeps me going, seriously! <3


	16. The Black Spot

  
XIV.

_  
Natty_

  
The sun rose red, painting the horizon in broad strokes as it made its ascent into the sky, and Natty Silver was passing the time by flipping a knife blade between her deft fingers.

The question of what would be done about the remaining crew loyal to Smollett hung in the air like an unwelcome smell, and though she tried not to be, she was worried for her _pai_.

When Jim had come back from his meeting with Natty’s father, he’d looked tired and sad. When Natty’d asked what they’d spoken about, Jim would only say that her father had clarified some things for him, and that now Jim understood.

“Understood what, exactly?” she demanded, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms over her chest.

She wondered what exactly her _pai_ could have told Jim Hawkins to make him feel he ‘understood.’ It wasn’t fair, a small, nagging part of her brain whined petulantly. It wasn’t fair that she was being left out of the loop this way, and she said as much to Jim, who sighed and shook his head.

“Sometimes it is easier to tell things to strangers than it is to tell the ones we love, no?” he said, his dark eyes searching her face as they sat in their hammocks in the humid galley.

Natty thought about it for a moment, rolled his words over in her mind. She supposed that it was less painful to tell something horrible about yourself to someone you didn’t know. What did it matter if a stranger judged you, hated you, pitied you? It would be infinitely worse to be judge, or hated, or pitied by a person you loved.

Still, she was stung, a little.

“He will tell you, before this is all over,” Jim offered, and when Natty met his eyes again, she saw the earnest certainty in his expression.   
Sighing, she shifted in her hammock, put her knife back into its sheath at her hip.

“You’re right, I suppose.” she said finally, then she was struck by a thought. “He’s not going to do anything stupid, is he? Like, oh, I don’t know, get himself killed on purpose?”

Jim shook his head, smiling now.

“I seriously doubt that, Natty. Your father…he has fought for survival very many times in his life, I think. I do not think he’s ready to give up now. Especially not when he has a family who would mourn him.”

Natty hadn’t thought about that. She wondered why she hadn’t thought about that.

She knew very little about what her _pai_ had lived through, had heard only bits and pieces about how he’d lost his leg, how he’d ended up a pirate, how he’d ended up in Nassau; she knew him as her father, as the one who loved her and her _muma_ , who took care of them, who let them take care of him.

She felt sad for the other man that her _pai_ was, for all that other man had been through. She wanted him to tell her about it, all of it. It hurt to think that there was a person inside her father whom she did not know.

She resolved to survive this, whatever might come. She would survive, and so would her _pai_ , and Jim, and then she would try to get to know the John Silver she had only just discovered.

She could do it.

. . .  
  


_Past_   
  


Silver still remembered that day when he pulled Flint out of the ocean.

Memories of his time with Flint, and thoughts of the man in general, seemed to strike Silver at the oddest and most inconvenient of times; when he had witnessed the birth of his daughter, and caught himself bursting with joy and wishing he could share it with his former captain; when he would lie awake with the aching, phantom pain of his stump, remembering how Flint had been the only one who could properly dig his fingers in and quell the discomfort; when he looked in the mirror at himself, and saw what he had become, the man he now was.

Now, watching his four-year-old daughter play in the shallow surf where waves met sand, Silver recalled vividly the day he’d rescued Flint, the day Flint had killed Gates.  

It had been swelteringly hot, and all hope had seemed lost, and Silver had been at a complete loss for what his next move should be.

Then, he saw Flint, with his arms spread wide in supplication, his eyes closed, standing over the rail. He watched, transfixed, as Flint let himself fall into the clear water, watched as he sunk down, down, down.

In the next moment, Silver had thrown himself over the rail. He’d always been a strong swimmer, for all he hated the sea, but pulling an unconscious, wounded man in heavy clothes to shore with him was certainly a challenge.

A few times, Silver had thought his legs would give out from kicking so hard, or his lungs might burst from holding his breath, but in the end, he’d made it.

Coughing and sputtering on his knees, he had wondered why he’d done it. Why his body had reacted without giving his brain a chance to think it through. He reasoned that it was because Flint was his only hope, his only way out of the whole bloody mess, and for a long time after, he believed it.

  
Watching the sparkling, bright blue waves curling and breaking, watching the sun dance on the water and make little Natty’s skin glow and gleam, Silver could see what he hadn’t been able to before.

He’d watched Flint jump, watched him go under the waves, and it had been like watching his whole life sinking.

  
He hadn’t been able to let that happen.

  
. . .

XV.

  
The council of pirates lasted quite some time, most of which Silver had expected to spend pinching the bridge of his nose and cursing the stupidity of sailors under his breath.

He would say this for pirates, though; there was never a dull moment when they were around.

That was not necessarily the first thing on his mind, however, when he was handed a folded scrap of paper by a hesitant younger man. In any other circumstances, it would have been comical to see the boy’s slow advance, the timid way he had set down each foot making his way toward Silver, holding his closed right hand in front of him.

“Step up, lad,” he snapped, growing impatient. “I won’t eat you. Hand it over, I know damn well what it is.”

The boy stepped forward briskly, passed Silver the paper, and slipped smarty back again to stand amongst his companions.

Silver unfolded the paper, raising one brow as he did so.

“The black spot, is it? I thought so,” he observed. “Where might you have got the paper? Oh, well now,” he clucked his tongue softly, voice taking on a gentle, chiding sort of tone. “This _is_ rather unlucky. You’ve gone and cut this out of a Bible. What fucking fool cut a Bible?”

“Ah, there!” said the man called Morgan—“there! What did I say? No good’ll come o’ that, I said.”

“Well, you’ve about fixed it now, among you,” Silver continued blandly. “You’ll all swing now, I reckon. What soft-headed fuck had a Bible?”

“It was Dick,” said one man.

No loyalty among thieves, Silver snorted to himself.

“Dick, was it? Then Dick can get to prayers,” said Silver with a smirk. “He’s seen his slice of luck, and you may lay to that.”

George, the drifter with the unsettling yellow eyes, interjected.

“Belay that talk, John Silver,” he said. “This crew has tipped you the black spot in full council, as in duty-bound; just you turn it over, as in duty-bound, and see what’s wrote there. Then you can talk.”

“Thank you, George, you’re quite right.” Silver replied. “You always were brisk for business, the rules by heart and all that, I’m pleased to see.”

He stared down at the page in his hands and raised his eyebrows even higher, though the easy tone of his voice never changed.

“What do we have here? Hmm, ‘deposed’—that’s it, is it? Very prettily written, to be sure. Your hand, George? You’ll be captain next, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Come on, mate,” George sighed, half-growling. “You don’t fool this crew no more. You’re a funny man, by your account, but you’re over now, and you’ll maybe step down off that barrel, and help vote.”

“I thought you said you knew the rules,” Silver returned contemptuously, temper flaring. “Leastways, if you don’t, _I_ do. And I wait here—I’m still the captain of you shits—til you’ve all had out with your grievances, and I’ve replied. In the meantime,” he exhaled sharply out his nose “your black spot isn’t worth what I could muster up to spit.”

“Oh,” replied George with an unpleasant smile, “you don’t be under no kind of apprehension, _we’re_ all square, we are. First, you’ve made a hash of this cruise—you’ll be a bold man to say no to that. Second, you let the enemy out of this here trap for nothing. Why did they want out? I dunno, but it’s pretty plain they wanted it. Third, you wouldn’t let us go at them upon the march, too soft over your bloody daughter—”

“—that’s _enough_ ,” hissed Silver. “One more word out of anyone about my daughter, and I’ll make sure whoever says it has to piss sitting down the rest of his days.”

“And fourth, there’s that bloody Hawkins boy. We see through you, John Silver,” George said coldly. “You’re naught but a weak old man what once was a pirate. You’re finished.”

“Is that all?” Silver asked, quietly.

“We’ll all swing and sun-dry for your bungling,” retorted George.

There was an eerie moment of silence throughout the crew before Silver spoke again.

“Well, now,” he began “look here, I’ll answer these four points, one after another. So you think I fucked up the cruise, do you? You all knew what I wanted, and you all should know that, if it had been done how I’d wanted, we’d have been on this ship with the hold packed full of treasure and well on our way back home. Who do you suppose it was that crossed me? Who forced my hand, tipping me the black the day we landed, beginning this dance?

“Ah, it’s a fine dance—I’m with you there—and looks mighty like a hornpipe and a rope’s end at Execution Dock by London town, it does. But it was Anderson what done it, and Hands, and you, George Merry! And you’re the last above board of that same meddling crew, and you have the fucking Davy Jones’s insolence to up and stand for captainship over me—you, that sank the lot of us! I would say I’m surprised, but, well,” and here, Silver looked pointedly from each man to the next, coolly assessing.

“And that’s for number one, of your ridiculous points,” Silver continued, mopping the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief. “Why, I give you my word, it makes me sick to speak to you. You’ve neither sense nor memory, and I leave it to fancy where your mothers were that let you lot come to sea. I’d give my other leg for a competent man in the whole lot of you.”

“Go on, _pai_ ,” Natty said from her place in the far corner. “Speak up to the others.”

“Ah,” Silver agreed, “the others They’re a nice lot, aren’t they, my girl? They want to tell me this cruise has gone to shit, yet they have no idea just how deep in the shit we are. We’re so near the gallows that my neck’s stiff with thinking on it.”

He turned, paced the shipboards for a moment before he began to speak again. He noted with a sharp pleasure that the men gave him a wide berth.

“You’ve seen them, I shouldn’t wonder; hanged in chains, birds about them, seamen pointing them out as they go down with the tide. Do you remember Charles Vane? Jack Rackham? I’ll tell you: you can hear the chains clink and jangle as the bodies sway. Now, here we all are, every mother’s son of us, thanks to him,” he nodded at George, “and Hands, and Anderson, and other ruination fools of you. And if you want to know about Hawkins, you can just keep wondering.”

Silver knew how to talk men around to his way of thinking. He’d known how to do it since he was a teenager, hungry and living on scraps and pennies, stealing more often than not.

This was different, though, as all his speeches had been different since Flint had happened to him. Silver remembered when he was young, and everything was gunpowder and sweat and tense muscles, locked jaws. He remembered what it felt like to almost die, so many times, to come so close to the veil that his fingers slipped through to the other side.

Flint taught him this ruthlessness, this calculating mind for war. Or, at least, that’s what Silver had believed for so many years. That if he had not met James Flint, he would not have such darkness inside himself, nor such shadow of blood caked beneath his nails.

Now, he realized for the hundredth time that that wasn’t so; he’d always had it within him, the capability to hold men and harness them and bend them to his will. It was as if Flint had whispered to that black part of Silver’s soul, crooned softly to it and nourished it and watched it blossom.

Silver could see already that most of the men were nodding as he spoke, and muttering to themselves, agreeing and changing alliances back to Silver’s side. If they were to have any hope of making an escape from the island, he had to have everyone. He had to kill anyone who opposed him, a fact which he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge for some time.

Silver took some comfort in the fact that he’d reached and understanding with Jim Hawkins; he hated the thought of killing a boy no older than his daughter. It wasn’t right to kill a child, no matter if they looked fully grown or not. He’d never understood why it was that boys were so quick to be treated as grown men, to bear the full weight which that entailed, while girls were meant to be babied and controlled until they were married off and given—basically as property—to the man they were to wed. Silver knew that at seventeen, whether boy or girl, a child was just that: a _child_. He’d never killed a child, and he didn’t plan to start now.

“We’re using the boy as bait,” he told the men, ignoring both Natty’s gasp and Hawkins’ choked sort of sound. “He’s on our side, and you’re to take that as law, because it’s me that’s said it. They’re going to send someone for him, you mark my words, and that’s how we’ll draw them out.”

“But what about the treasure?” said someone irritably.

“Jim here’s got the whole map memorized, don’t you, boy?” Silver looked to Hawkins, hoping that he was able to convey with just his eyes how delicate the situation was.

“ _Sì_ , _Capitano_ , I do.”

“And he could draw it out for us, on any old scrap of spare Bible anyone’s got lying about, couldn’t you, Jim?”

“I could.”

“So, the way I see it,” Silver said, turning back to face the men with a smile, “is that I got the ship, and by way of Jim here, found the treasure. Who’s the better man? I think I’ll resign now, if it’s all the same. I’ve had my fill of you lot.”

And he turned his back on them, counting mentally from five, four, three—

“Silver!” the men cried. “Silver is our captain!”

He allowed himself a small smile before turning back again.

“So that’s the tune, is it? Ah, George, I reckon you’ll have to wait another turn, friend. You’re lucky I’m not as much for revenge as I once was. So this black spot, it isn’t much good now, is it? Dick’s crossed his luck and spoiled his Bible, and that’s about all.”

“It’ll do to kiss the book on still, won’t it?” grumbled Dick, who was evidently uneasy at the curse he imagined that he’d brought upon himself.

“A Bible with a bit cut out!” Silver scoffed derisively. “I shouldn’t think it any more binding than a hymnal.”

“Don’t it, though?” cried Dick, with an odd sort of joy. “Well, I reckon that’s worth having, too.”

Silver shook his head, laughing softly.

“Alright, you lot, back to work, we’ve got plenty to do before we make for the beach tonight.”

When the men had gone about their business, Silver picked up the sheaf of paper on which the black spot had been written. The printed side had been blackened with wood ash, which begun to come off, smudging and dirtying Silver’s fingers. It was blank on one side, for it had been the last leaf, and the other side contained a verse or two of Revelations.

One line among the rest struck sharply in Silver’s mind:

_Without are dogs and murderers._

“ _Pai_ , what are we going to do?” Natty’s voice shook Silver out of his daze.

He closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head.

“We’ll do what we must, my pearl, and nothing less.” he said, hoping that she would understand.

Hawkins was by her side, as was so common a sight nowadays, like a benevolent shadow of sorts. Silver supposed it could be far, far worse.

“What should I do?” she asked, standing straight and proud, as Silver and Madi had raised her to stand.

“You, I expect,” he smiled tiredly at his daughter, “will be right in the thick of it, putting your poor father in a right state.”

Natty flashed him a bright, quick grin, before heading for the hatch back to the galley, Hawkins in tow.

  
Silver wondered—and supposed that she likely could—if his daughter could see the perilous position that he was in, keeping the mutineers together with one hand, and grasping with the other, after every means possible and impossible to make his peace and do his penance.   
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for leaving you guys hanging another week. It's been really hectic for me, and I'm working on a lot of stuff to prepare for my voyage to Italy in July, and AGHHGH. I have actually written quite a bit, so here is the first of about three chapters I've been too busy to edit and post. I hope you can forgive me, and will keep reading! <3


	17. The Treasure Hunt - 1

XVI.

_Natty_

  
“There’s a breeze coming, Jim,” Natty remarked idly, and sure enough, a cool wind from off the water rustled through the foliage and soothed the sweat of their backs.

“ _Sì_ , and thank god for that,” he replied breathlessly.

The heat hadn’t let up, though the sun was set, and insects chirped and whirred loudly from all sides. Natty was grateful she’d thought to mash up some herbs like her muma had taught her, and rubbed the paste on her exposed skin before getting too deep into the jungle; the mosquitoes were vicious here, and being bitten could make you very ill, as well as uncomfortable.

She’d given Jim some of the paste, too, as she’d seen the welts on his back from their adventure two days ago. It seemed he was positively eaten alive by the insects, who’d left itchy, red raised patches all over his skin.

They were following the hastily scrawled recreation of the treasure map that Jim had done on another page torn from poor Dick’s bible. Silver had sent them ahead to find it while the men dispatched what was left of the loyal in Smollett’s crew.

Privately, Natty had worried aloud to her father about what would happen to him, and to their family, if Smollett, Trelawney, and Livesy were killed. News would surely reach the authorities, some way or other, and it wouldn’t be safe for them to return to any port in the Caribbean.

Her _pai_ had held her hands in his, had promised her that he wouldn’t let that happen. He had told her that if anything, when all the ‘honest’ men were done away with, it would be easier to sell a tale of tropical disease or running afoul of a storm. _Dead men, my girl,_ he’d said. _What do we say about dead men?_

“Dead men tell no tales,” she said softly to herself now in the forest, quietly enough that even Jim did not hear, not over the chorus of birds, whirring insects, and shrill calls of monkeys.

“According to the map,” Jim said, after they’d been hiking a while, “that a tall tree is to be the first marker.”

He nodded, and several yards in front of where they stood, was a huge, towering tree with hanging vines and sprawling roots. Tangled up in the vines, as if it had been overtaken by them as if by the tentacles of some kraken, was a human skeleton.

The two of them crept closer, and Natty felt the thrum of excitement vibrate all through her. When they were near enough so that if one of them wished to reach out, they would have touched the remains.

The skeleton was still clothed in some shreds of fabric, and by the material and the pattern, Jim and Natty agreed that the man must have been a sailor. His arms were raised above his head like a diver’s, pointing in the complete opposite direction of his feet.

“Ah!” cried Jim triumphantly. _“Est, sud-est, e da est!”_ he said excitedly, beaming at Natty.

“I’m assuming that means that we’re on the right track?” she asked, amused.

“It’s a compass, you see?” he gestured to the skeleton. “Here is a pointer, and there is the line for the Pole Star. This is the starting point for the real path to the treasure.”

Natty squeezed Jim’s arm without thinking, smiling widely because they were so close.

“Clever, clever,” she breathed, still grinning at him.

He licked his lips unconsciously, his gaze flicking to her mouth and then back to her eyes. It wouldn’t be hard at all for Natty to just lean in a little, and—

—a twig snapping a little ways off startled them both, and Natty released Jim’s arm, taking a step back. Both of them were flushed and looking away, mumbling something or other about heading back to the base camp to see if the deed was done.

  
That didn’t stop Natty’s eyes roaming back over to fall on Jim every so often, nor did it stop the way her stomach flipped pleasantly at the memory of the way he’d looked at her; it was very much like how her father looked at her mother.

  
. . .  
  


When it was done, Silver found he was trembling.   
  
There was blood on his hands, on his face, likely all over his clothes; he could smell it, thick and brackish as the sea itself.

He hadn’t wanted to kill them. He’d planned to talk it through with Smollett, try one last time to talk him round to Silver’s point of view.

In the end though, it was always going to be this way, to end in blood.

Smollett muttered something snidely under his breath, and when asked to repeat it, had pointedly told Silver that he didn’t negotiate with pirates and mutineers, _especially_ not ones rumored to be sodomites, and who had Negro wives and children.

Apparently, the rumors of his relationship with Flint had reached cleaner ears than just those of the pirates and merchants at Nassau and the other isles. Silver could have handled that, if it were the only jibe Smollett had made at him.

But, the man had been monumentally stupid. He’d insulted Silver’s wife, and his child, and on the lowest, crudest level; it enraged Silver to no end, that this was how people thought. That people who looked and spoke differently from the pasty arseholes of England were somehow unfit to be seen as equal beings with just as much right to life and prosperity and all that bullshit.

The rage overtook Silver, and he flew at Smollett, taking his crutch to the side of the man’s face. It was like he was echoing his movements from all those years ago, in that tavern with Dufresne. Silver bashed at Smollett’s face, and then kicked him with his peg leg until he couldn’t anymore.

He stood there over the pulpy remains, breathing heavily, for several moments.

Then, he gave his men the signal.  
  
  


It was a bloodbath, but to Silver, it felt as righteous and cleansing as a spring rain.

  
. .  
  


The jungle terrain was murder on Silver’s bad leg, but he kept his lips in a tight, thin line, and trekked along with his men through the thick greenness.

“It’s just up here!” Natty called from the front of the group, Hawkins at her side.   
  
When Silver reached the giant tree, he shook his head, feeling cold inside.

“This is one of _his_ jokes,” he said to the crew, “and no mistake. Him and these six were alone here, and he killed them, every man. This one he hauled here and laid down by compass.”

Nobody asked who _he_ was; nobody needed to. They all knew that the _he_ Silver meant was Flint.

“That’d be Allardyce, wouldn’t it?” piped up Hands in his sonorous voice. “See the yellow hair, and the long bones?”

Silver nodded. He remembered Allardyce, the former pickpocket they’d recruited on a trip to Havana. He’d been gangly and blond and congenial, a well-liked man amongst the whole crew. He’d also been one of the most ruthless fighters Silver had ever seen.

“I remember him,” Silver said. “He owed me money.”

“He took my knife ashore with him,” said Morgan.

“Speaking of knives,” Silver said, thinking suddenly, “I don’t suppose we could find his lying around? Flint wasn’t a man to pick a seaman’s pockets, and the birds would leave it be.”

“There ain’t a thing left here,” said George Merry, digging around among the bones. “Not a copper doit nor a baccy box. Don’t look natural, I say.”

“No,” Silver hummed in agreement. “No, it doesn’t. If Flint were alive, we’d be in hot water right now. Six they were, and six are we; and bones is what they are now.” he mused, wondering if Flint would have killed him if given the chance.

“I saw him dead with these here dead-lights,” Morgan said. “Billy took me in, wanted me to see it. There he laid, ol’ Flint, with penny-pieces on his eyes.”

“Dead—ay, sure enough he’s dead and gone below,” said another man, with a bandage on his head. “But if ever a spirit walked, it would be Flint’s. Dear heart, but he died bad, did Flint.”

Silver ached to think of it. The copper pennies on his eyes was only fitting—he’d always, in a way, been like Odysseus to Silver, endlessly journeying home, finding rest only in death.

“He died worse than bad,” said George. “He raged, and he hollered for the rum, and he sang ‘Fifteen Men’ as if it were his only song, mates. I’ve never liked to hear it since then, not even when your bird sings it, Captain,” he nodded at Silver, who had the bird in question perched on his shoulder. “It was hot, and the window was open, and I heard that old song as clear as clear, and the death-haul on the man already.”

“Come on,” Silver said, clearing his throat and frowning. “Stow this talk. He’s dead, and he doesn’t walk, and that much I know. He won’t walk by day, at least, and you may lay to that. Fetch on ahead for the doubloons.”   
  
They started off again, but in spite of the hot sun and the humid jungle, and the sweat making his clothes stick to his skin, Silver felt cold inside.

The men no longer ran separate and shouting through the wood, but kept side by side and spoke with bated breath. The terror of old, dead Flint had fallen on their spirits.

They saw him as a monster, from the stories they’d heard and the things they’d seen for themselves; Flint was a cruel man, with blood under his nails and a lifetime of dark deeds to his name.  
  
  


Silver felt glad for them, though, that at least they didn’t know Flint as a man.   
  
He would rather be afraid than feel the pain he carried with him now behind his ribs, now and always. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a wee little chapter, but I wanted to give it to you guys. We're actually nearing the end, and I don't think this will be the full 34 chapters, but we'll see! I might actually write the epilogue and Silver coming home and stuff, which the book obviously does not say anything about. I would like to try and make this as long as the actual Treasure Island book (which is 34 chapters), but we'll see. 
> 
> Hopefully you're still liking it! More to come soon, my darlings! <3


	18. The Treasure Hunt - 2

XVII.

  
Partly from the damping influence of the talk of Flint, and partly to rest himself and the injured men, the whole party sat down as soon as they’d gained the brow of the ascent.

The plateau they’d reached was somewhat tilted towards the west, and the spot on which the crew had paused commanded a wide prospect on either hand. Before them, over the treetops, they beheld the Cape of the Woods fringed with surf; behind, they not only looked down upon the anchorage and Skeleton Island, but saw—clear across the spit and the eastern lowlands—a great field of open sea upon the east.

Sheer above them rose the Spyglass, dotted with single trees and ferns, black with precipices. There was no sound save for that of the distant breakers mounting from all round, and the chirp of countless insects and birds in the brush. Not a man, not a sail upon the sea; the very largeness of the view only served to increase the sense of solitude.

How much of his adult life had been spent hunkered down in jungles or on islands? Silver pondered this idly, feeding bits of fruit to the bird perched on his shoulder. After a few more moments passed, he took out his compass and took his bearings.

“There are three ‘tall trees,’ he said “about in the right line from Skeleton Island. ‘Spy-glass Shoulder,’ I take it, means from that lower point there. It’s child’s play to find the stuff now, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“I don’t feel so sharp,” groused Morgan, looking around warily. “Thinkin’ of old Flint—I think it were—as done me.”

“Ah, well, my lad,” Silver nodded to him “you praise your stairs he’s dead.”

“He were an ugly devil,” cried someone else, with a shudder. “That blue in the face, too!”

“That was how the rum took him,” added George Merry. “Blue! Well, I reckon he was blue. That's true word.”

Silver sighed and ignored the pain in his chest. He didn’t want to imagine how Flint had looked at the end, how the drink had ruined him. The last time Silver had seen Flint, he was still—he was still _Flint_. Those worn lines in his face, the sunburn, the freckles; the piercing eyes and sun-bleached brows.

Ever since they’d come upon the skeleton, the men had been on this same subject, speaking lower and lower, nearly whispering now. Silver hated to encourage it, even to allow it, but he didn’t feel he had the energy to stop them.

And anyhow, what could he say?

That Flint, as he was in Silver’s memories, was strong and weathered and still handsome, for all that the world had done to him?

That it seemed unfathomable to Silver that there could exist a version of James Flint who was anything less than those things?

He held his tongue.

Then, all of a sudden, out of the middle of the trees in front of them, a thin, high, trembling voice struck up the well-known air and words.

_“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”_

The men were dreadfully affected; Silver doubted he’d ever seen more spooked men. The color drained from their faces as if by enchantment. Some leapt to their feet, some clawed hold of others; Morgan groveled on the ground.

“It’s him!” he wheezed. “It’s Flint, by God!”

The song had stopped then, as suddenly as it began—broken off in the middle of a note, as though someone had lai his hand upon the singer’s mouth. Coming so far through the clear, sunny atmosphere among the green treetops, Silver thought it had sounded airy and sweet, and was mostly unaffected.

“Come on, men,” he growled. “This won’t do. Stand by to go about. This is a rum start, and I can’t name the voice, but it’s someone skylarking—someone that’s flesh and blood, and you may lay to that.”

He wished that such a thing as ghosts were possible in that moment; that a specter of Flint would appear to him, so he could beg the other man for forgiveness, so he could tell him one last time, and in proper words, that he loved him.

The others began to lend an ear to his encouragements, and were coming back to themselves. Silver noted with some relief that neither Jim nor Natty had seemed the least bit troubled by the eerie voice, when the same voice broke out again—not singing, but in a distant hail, echoing faintly among the clefts of the Spy-glass.

 _“James McGraw,”_ it wailed—for that was the word that best describes the sound— _“James McGraw! James McGraw!”_ again and again and again; and then rising a little higher, and with an oath of curses. _“Fetch aft the rum, James!”_  
  
Silver was stunned into silence, standing stock-still in his place.

He knew the name McGraw, knew that it was once belonging to James Flint. The only person who had known of Flint’s past was Miranda, and she was long-dead. Woodes Rogers, the greasy, slimy fuck, had known. He was dead too, and deserving of it.

The other men remained rooted to the ground, their eyes starting from their heads. Long after the voice had died away, they still stared in silence, dreadfully, before them.

“That fixes it!” gasped one. “Let’s go!”

“They was his last words,” moaned Morgan, “his last words above board.”

Dick had got his sullied bible out, and was praying volubly. He had been well brought up, had Dick, before he came to sea and fell among bad companions, Silver thought.

His blood felt cold in his veins, though, and he tried to ignore the thought of Flint, in a hazy stupor so near death, calling out for his former self.

He was unconquered, though, and Natty fell into step with him, linking his arm with hers.

“Nobody on this godforsaken island ever heard of James McGraw,” he muttered to her; “not one but I, or perhaps, someone else in this party.”

And then, making a great effort, he said, “Shipmates! I’m here to get this bloody prize, and I’ll not be beat by man nor devil. I wasn’t afraid of Flint in his life, and I’ll face him dead. There’s severn hundred thousand pounds, not a quarter mile from here. Leave the dead buried, where they ought to remain, and follow me.”

But there was no sign of reawakening courage in the men; rather, indeed, a growing terror at the irreverence of Silver’s words.

“Belay there, John!” said George. “Don’t you cross a spirit.”

And the rest were all too stupid and terrified to reply. They would have run away severally had they dared, but fear kept them together, and kept them close by Silver, as if his daring helped them. He fought at the memories, and the aching sadness, and remained unfazed by the trickery of the voice.

“Spirit? Well, maybe,” he said. “But there’s one thing that remains unclear. There was an echo, was there not? No man ever saw a spirit with a shadow, and I doubt there’s ever been a spirit with an echo. That isn’t a spirit’s nature, surely?”

This argument was weak, and Silver knew fuck-all about ghosts, but he knew that the men were superstitious, and to his wonder, they seemed relieved.

“Well, that’s so,” George said. “You’ve a head upon your shoulders, John, and no mistake. ‘Bout ship, mates! This here crew is on a wrong tack, I do believe. And come to think on it, it was like Flint’s voice, I grant you, but not just so clear-away like it, after all. It was like somebody else’s voice, now—it was like—”

“—Ben Gunn,” Silver hissed, wishing he could smack himself for being so blind. The wily fucker Ben Gunn.

“Ay, and so it were!” cried Morgan, springing on his knees. “Benn Gunn it was!”

“It don’t make much odds, do it, now?” asked Dick. “Ben Gunn’s not here in the body, anymore than Flint.”

The older hands greeted this remark with cheerful scorn.

“Ah, nobody minds Ben Gunn,” said George. “Dead or alive, nobody minds him.”

It was extraordinary, Silver thought, sharing a look with his daughter, how the men’s spirits returned yet again. The stupidity of people was always shocking.

Soon the men were chatting together, with intervals of listening; and not long after, hearing no further sound, the shouldered the tools and set forth again, George walking first with Silver’s compass to keep them on the right line with Skeleton Island.

He’d said the truth, Silver though, bemused; nobody minded Ben Gunn, dead or alive.

And, he was—as his daughter and Jim had informed him breathlessly back when they’d first returned to the ship—decidedly alive. Silver wasn’t sure what he wanted to do about that, only that it wasn’t a huge concern, and he wasn’t extremely eager to interact with a half-mad castaway after all of this.

Dick kept hold of his bible, looking around fearfully as he went, but he found no sympathy.

“You’ve no reason to fear, boy,” Silver told him, but Dick remained unconvinced.

In fact, it seemed to Silver that the boy was altogether in failing health. He was one of the only in the bunch from the mainland, likely having no immunity to tropical diseases or infections, and the heat and exhaustion was clearly taking their toll on Dick. He was pale and clammy, sweating buckets and trembling. Silver had a feeling he would not last the voyage back to Port Royal.

  
. .  
  


_Natty_

  
It was fine open walking from this point, upon the summit; their way lay a little downhill, as the plateau tilted towards the west. The trees and ferns, great and small, grew widely apart; and even between the clumps of nutmeg and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sun.

Striking, as they did, pretty near northwest across the island, they drew ever nearer under the shoulders of the Spy-glass, looking ever wider over that western bay where Natty and Jim had trembled in that ramshackle coracle boat.

The first of the tall trees was reached, and by the bearing, proved to be the wrong one. So with the second. Natty mopped the sweat from her forehead with the cuff of her shirt, and rolled her pant legs up over her knees, and hoped they would find the treasure soon. She wanted to be done with this. She wanted to sleep in her own bed.

The third tree rose nearly two hundred feet in the air above a clump of underwood, a giant of a thing that stood out amongst the others, almost incongruous with the indigenous jungle. It was conspicuous far to sea both on the east and west, and might have been entered as a sailing mark upon the chart.

But it wasn’t the size that made the pirates’ eyes shine and their mouths gape slightly; it was the knowledge that seven hundred thousand pounds in gold lay somewhere buried below its spreading shadow. The thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up all their previous terrors.

Their eyes burned in their heads, their feet grew speedier and lighter, their whole souls were bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure what lay waiting there for each of them. Natty muttered to Jim that the men had likely already spent their shares in their heads.

Natty’s _pai_ struggled with the terrain, grunting quietly as he maneuvered his crutch. He cursed the flies and the sun and his leg, taking no pains to hide his thoughts. Natty could read her father like print, anyhow; in the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten. She knew her father planned to seize the treasure and board the _Hispaniola_ , sailing her back with a neatly prepared lie as to how the rest of the crew met untimely deaths. She knew that he and his men had cut every ‘honest’ throat about the island, as he had intended. She knew even without seeing the dried blood on his clothes, spattered on his face.

Shaken as she was by this, it was hard for her to care overmuch, keeping up with the rapid pace of the men. She stayed as near as she could to her pai, and Jim stayed at her other side, and together they made their way a little bit behind the rest of the crew.

Dick, who had dropped even further behind, was babbling to himself both prayers and curses as his fever kept rising.

Natty was haunted by the thought of the men who had been killed, and all by Flint on the plateau. She thought about the man—he who held such mysterious power over her _pai_ , he who had died at Savannah, singing and shouting for drink—who had, with his own hand, cut down six accomplices. This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with the cries and gasps of those men.

How could her _pai_ have been so close to such a man? And yet, Natty found she could not fault him, even if she didn’t know the truth underlying all.

  
Then, they were at the margin of the thicket.

“Mates, all together!” shouted the one called George Merry, and the foremost of them broke into a run.

Not ten yards further, Natty watched them stop, heard a low cry rise. Her pai doubled his pace, and so did she and Jim.

When they halted again, before them was a great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. In this were the shaft of a broken pick, and the boards of several packing cases strewn around. On one of these boards Natty saw, branded with a hot iron, the name _Walrus_ —the name of Flint’s ship.

All was clear; the cache had been found and rifled, the seven hundred thousand pounds were _gone_.

  
Amidst the cursing and stomping, Natty did not fail to notice her _pai_ slowing going over to where the piece of shipboards with the branding lie. He crouched down and picked up the board on which was burned _Walrus_ , and stared down at the word like his heart was breaking.

  
It made Natty feel as though her heart was breaking too.  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OoOooooH dun dun DUHHHHH! It's gone! 
> 
> I'm sure some of you know that I've changed a good bit of the story, like how I had Silver kill all the dudes (sorry Smollett!) and how he's not treating Jim like a hostage. 
> 
> I've also changed the name said by the 'ghost' to James McGraw. I'm not sure who Darby McGraw was supposed to be, there's a lot of speculation about a son, or a relative, but I was like, let's make it sort of existential and weird. So I made Flint saying his own name. LOL. 
> 
> Also, I'm going to probably (definitely) write more 'after the island' chapters, so it's like Treasure Island Plus. Or whatever. 
> 
> I love you guys! <3 seriously! I'm glad my mojo has seemingly returned for a spell, so I'm taking advantage! Two chapters in one day! Yay!


	19. Flint's treasure

XVIII.  
  
Silver felt as though he were listing, off-kilter. He stared down at the piece of shipboard in his hands and blinked back stubborn, stinging tears.

The men of the crew all looked as though they’d each been struck, but for Silver, it was as though the blow passed through his body and left. Every bit of him had been set, full-stretch, on that money. He was brought up in a single second, dead, and then kept his head as he always did, found his tempter, and changed his plan before the others had had time to realize their disappointment.

“Jim,” he whispered, “Natty, take these, and stand by for trouble.”

He passed the children each a double-barreled pistol, and began to move quietly northward. In a few steps, he had put the hollow between himself, with Jim and Natty on his side, and the rest of the men on the other. Then, he looked at Natty and nodded, not needing words to convey to his daughter just how narrow a corner they were backed into.

“So you’ve changed sides again,” Jim whispered wryly, to which Silver could only spare a snort.

The pirates left no time for further talk; they began to leap, one after the other, into the pit, digging with their fingers and throwing the boards aside as they did so.

Morgan found a piece of gold, holding it up so it flashed in the sun, and letting go a stream of impressive curse words. The gold was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter of a minute.

“Two guineas!” roared Merry, shaking it at Silver. “That’s your seven hundred thousands pounds, is it? You’re the man for bargains, ain’t you? You’re him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed fuck!”

“Dig away, boys,” said Silver coolly. “You’ll find some pig-nuts, I expect.”

“Pig-nuts!” repeated Merry in a scream. “Mates, do you hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it all along. Look in the face of him, and you’ll see it wrote there.”

“Ah, Merry,” remarked Silver, “standing for captain again? You’re a pushing lad, to be sure.”

But this time, every one was entirely in Merry’s favor. They began to scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances behind them. One thing Silver observed, which looked well enough for he and the children, they all got out upon the opposite side of the pit.

There they stood, three on one side, five on the other, the pit between them and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow. Silver didn’t move; he watched them, upright on his crutch, staring stonily across the gap at the men.

At last, George Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters. Silver held his derisive snorting at bay.

“Mates,” said George, “there’s three of them alone there; ones the old cripple what brought us all here and blundered us down to this, the other’s the boy I mean to have the throat of, and the third is ol’ Silver’s pride and joy. A lovely little thing, if you catch my meaning.”

Silver seethed inwardly, and to his not-quite surprise, Jim made a low, angry sound from in his throat. Natty stood with her chin up and her eyebrow raised, hand on her pistol, daring anyone to speak further.

George was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meaning to lead a charge. Just then, though, three musket shots flashed out of the thicket. Merry tumbled headfirst into the excavation; the man with the bandaged head spun around and fell upon his side, lying there twitching. The other three turned and ran for it with all their might.

Before anything else could happen, Silver was reaching for his own pistols and firing two shots in to the struggling Merry. As the man rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony, Silver said, “George, I do believe I settled you.”

At the same moment, Ben Gunn came out of the clearing, musket smoking, from among the nutmeg trees.

“Forward!” he cried. “Double quick, my lads, we must head ‘em off the boats!”

And the four of them spared no hesitation, clambering off at a great pace through the brush.

Silver’s muscles burned, his lungs rasped; he was too old for this, no matter that he kept his body fit as he could. He felt as though his chest would burst, that his arms would give out, but he still kept on. He thought only of going home, and it spurred him on.

When at last they reached a more open part of the plateau, they could see three survivors running still in the same direction as they’d started, right for Mizzenmast Hill.

Silver knew that they were already between those men and the boats, so he sat down and watched the others follow suit. He mopped his face with the sleeve of the blue coat, panting.

“And so it’s you, Ben Gunn,” he said when at last he’d caught his breath. “How’s island life treating you?”

The old sailor grinned with a mouthful of ill-tended teeth.

“I’m Ben Gunn, I am,” he replied to Silver, wriggling like an eel. “And,” he added, after a long drawn pause, “how do, Mr. Silver? Pretty well, I thank ye, says you.”

“Ben, Ben,” murmured Silver, “you’ve done me, haven’t you? You’ve gone and picked clean the treasure, haven’t you?”

Natty went back for one of the pickaxes, deserted by the mutineers in their flight, and then the four of them commenced down the hill where the boats were lying.

“You found the treasure,” Silver continued, sweat still dripping from every pore, “and you dug it up—backbreaking work, that—and you hauled it away. You’ve got it stashed somewhere on this godforsaken spit of land, and you’ll take me to it.”

The old castaway glared warily at Silver, but clearly he saw this was a fight he couldn’t win. Natty and Jim were still armed. Silver, old and battered as he was, still had teeth.

“And what do I get out of it, eh?” Ben Gunn squinted, lines creasing his weathered face.

Silver felt some spark of life stirring within him; he wasn’t dead yet, after all. This was what he could do, this bargaining, this convincing. This had always been his crown.

“You, my friend,” he clapped the other man soundly on the shoulder, “get the chance to actually fucking spend some of it.”

Silver could see Gunn mulling it over, thinking so hard it likely strained his cracked mind. He waited patiently for the other man to see that his way was, as always, the best way. A good bargain.

“And you’ll take me back with ye, then?” Gunn asked, hesitance apparent in his voice and features.

“Ay,” Silver nodded to him. “We’ll take you back with us to Port Royal, where you may go ashore with the largest share of treasure.”

Several more moments passed, and then—Gunn nodded, and extended his hand for Silver to shake.

“It’s in a cave,” Gunn said. “A cave on the two-point hill on the northeast angle.”

  
. .

_  
Natty_

They rowed in one of the skiffs around to the side of the island on which Gunn’s cave was. The whole time, she watched her _pai_ from the corner of her eye as she rowed, taking in the set of his jaw and the furrow of his brow.

This journey had nearly killed him, she thought suddenly. He would likely take to his bed for a week upon their return to Nassau. There would be much to do in the shop, she thought idly; bookkeeping, stock inventory, cleaning…

“It’s just ahead,” Gunn said, and Natty snapped back into reality. They’d rowed some three miles or so, and her arms were burning from the effort.

Just a short ways away stood Ben Gunn’s cave, a gaping black maw set in the moss-covered stone.

It was so near to where they had anchored the _Hispaniola_ , Natty thought wryly of how near they had been to the treasure and not even known it. They pulled the skiff round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point to Ben Gunn’s treasure house, where Jim singlehandedly returned with the gig to the _Hispaniola_ , where he would pass the night on guard at Silver’s urging.

A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave. At the top, Natty felt a shiver run down her spine; this was it.

And then, they all entered the cave.

It was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with lush ferns. The floor was sandy, though there were a few sharp rocks to watch out for, and there were the remnants of several large fires from nights Ben Gunn must have spent in the cave.   
Gunn cast about for his tinderbox, and upon finding it, lit a torch which he then touched to a waiting pile of kindling.

The large fire flickered duskily, and in a far corner, Natty beheld great heaps of gold coin and stacked gold bars. She gasped; it was Flint’s treasure, the thing they had come so far to seek, and what had already cost the lives of seventeen men. Probably more.

How many had it cost in the amassing, though? Natty wondered to herself. What blood, what sorrow? What good ships scuttled on the deep, overrun with fish and kelp? What brave men were keelhauled and left to die, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty; perhaps no one alive could tell. Yet, Natty knew—her _pai_ could tell. And perhaps Ben Gunn. Each of them had taken their share in these crimes, as each had hoped in vain to share in the reward.

“Come on, my girl,” Silver said to Natty. “You’re a better daughter than I ever deserved.”

Natty watched as her _pai_ walked over to the corner where the golden haul lay, watched as he knelt down in front of the piles of coins and the bars of gold.

Her father took off his coat, then—and so torn and ragged a thing it was, missing buttons and coated with a fine layer of sand and dust—and laid it over the tallest stack of gold bars, gently, almost tenderly.

“I’m sorry,” Natty heard her _pai_ say, and his voice was a broken scrape. “I’m sorry every day.”

She was just about to cross the short distance between herself and her father, to put her arms around him and comfort him, when Ben Gunn spoke up.

“There’ll be this for ye as well, John Silver.” he pulled what appeared to be a letter from somewhere on his person, folded and yellowed with age.

Gunn walked over to Silver, handed him the folded letter, then stepped back to his original place near the mouth of the cave beside Natty.

“Perhaps we ought leave him be for a spell,” Gunn said quietly, just so Natty could hear. “Just until he’s had enough time alone with old Flint.”

Natty nodded numbly, and wandered alongside Ben Gunn out of the cave, to sit a little ways away, drawing pictures in the sand and staring out at the water.

. .

  
_John,_

_For everything that I have done, directly or indirectly, I am sorry. I don’t know what to say beyond that, but know that my regret is as vast and as deep as an ocean. When we began, all I had to offer you was a broken, pitiful thing—my heart, sad as it was. As it is.  
_   
_Though you’ve gone—and rightly so; your wife is good for you in ways I could never be—I still think of you. I miss your clever hands, your wicked tongue. I miss the sound of your crutch and peg, though I do not doubt you still loathe them. I don’t think I will ever get the chance to tell you in person, so far apart are we, and so near my end as I am; I thought that I should write it down, so that perhaps you might someday read it. If you’re reading this, John, I would have you know this: I love you still._

_I loved you then, and I love you now. If I am dead when you read this, it changes nothing._

_You were my undoing, John, but it was an undoing I was all too glad of. I was nothing if not willing._

_Perhaps in another life, another world, we will meet again._

_Until then, I suppose._

__  
Yours,  
  
James

  
. .

  
Silver held the letter still, though his vision blurred with stinging tears.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed Flint’s absolution, and his apology, until he’d gotten them; now, it felt like a heavy, crushing weight had lifted from Silver’s chest.

He knelt there awhile longer, until tentative footsteps wakened him from his daze. He knew just by the soft plod that it was his daughter, and he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt before facing her.

“Are you alright, _pai_?” Natty asked softly, concern sitting prettily on her young face.

Silver offered her a watery smile, then held the letter out to her. He knew it was cowardly, to let it do the difficult part for him, but he didn’t trust his voice at that moment. Natty took the paper and read silently, standing stock-still for several moments after finishing it.

“Now you know the truth of it,” Silver told his daughter, throat scratching and raw.

Natty looked at him for a long time, her eyes large and sad. She came over to kneel in front of him, and then put her arms around him the same as she’d done ever since she was a small child.

Something about the strength in her slight body, about the sureness in her arms as she held him, made Silver bury his face in his daughter’s shoulder, silent sobs shaking him.

“You should have told me before,” was all Natty said.  
  


They stayed there for a long time, until it was time to go.  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. 
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with me this long, we are ALMOST DONE!!! The last chapter will likely be double in length, as it will include the immediate future (heading back with the treasure) and a little bit into the future. I hope the change in chapter count doesn't bother anyone, I think this story has run its course in 20 rather than the original 34! That said, please read and sit tight for the FINAL CHAPTER WOWWWW 
> 
> <3


	20. Home again (ending + epilogue)

XVIII.

 

The voyage to Port Royal was uneventful, for which they were all quite thankful.

Ben Gunn, they found, was a very agreeable man when he was on his way back to civilization.

  
. . .  
  


_Natty_   
  


“ _Signorina_ Natty,” Jim began after a deep breath, furrowing his brow seriously. “I know that we have only been acquainted for a few weeks, but in that time, I feel—”

He wasn’t ever able to finish that sentence, because Natty—being Natty—laughed and took pity on him and grabbed his face in her hands and pulled him in for a kiss.

It sent little shivers all through her, the way Jim’s lips felt against hers. His mouth was soft and warm, and his stubble scratched at her cheek. He smelled like the sea, like gunpowder and sweat, and when his hands came up to rest on the small of her back, Natty hummed contentedly against his lips.

When they broke apart, Jim was beaming stupidly, and Natty had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself grinning like a fool.

“You know, you don’t have to stay here in Port Royal,” she said slyly, playing with the collar of his shirt.

“Oh, no?” Jim was looking at her with those sleepy eyes of his, through the dark net of his long eyelashes. His lips were curling up at the corners more than a little.

“You’re a rich man now, Jim Hawkins. You can go anywhere in the world,” Natty told him, laughing when he pulled her in for another kiss.

“I think maybe I would like to go to Nassau for awhile,” Jim said, grinning and not bothering to hide it.

Natty didn’t know where it had come from, her overwhelming fondness for this boy, with his musical accent and sharp wit. She wondered what her muma would say.

“No more adventuring?” she asked, raising her eyebrows disbelievingly. “One was enough to put you off them for good?”

Jim smiled and kissed her again, long and deep. When he pulled back, Natty looked at the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, at his dimples, and she felt young and light and bursting.

“Hmm,” Jim pretended to think for a moment. “Maybe we go to Italia, no? See an opera or two, now we can afford it.”

“Only if we can wear the clothes we have on right now,” Natty teased.

  
Her heart felt bright in her chest when Jim threw his head back and laughed.

. . .

  
Silver watched from a safe distance as his daughter, always so bold, kissed Jim Hawkins with the same fierce passion which she did everything.

It was, then, no surprise when the pair of them—flushed and grinning rather stupidly, Silver thought—came to find him and tell him that Jim would be coming with them to Nassau.

Silver looked at his daughter, and then at the boy whom she had so bewitched, and smirked.

“Let’s be off home, then,” was all he said, and the three of them made their way to the ship they’d commissioned a passage back to Nassau upon.

  
Standing on the deck, staring out at the ocean from over the rail, Flint on his shoulder, Silver felt peaceful for the first time in decades. He was going home, to see his wife and resume their lives. He was free, finally, and though his chest still ached some, it was no longer an ache of pain.

  
When they made port at Nassau, Madi was there to greet her husband and daughter with open arms and a bright white smile.

  
(When she laid eyes on Hawkins, she turned to Silver and raised an eyebrow knowingly.)

  
. . . . . . .

_Nassau, present day_

The flight was long and annoying, and John’s legs and back protested loudly with each step he took through the airport, shouldering his bag and feeling the sweat beading on his brow already.

He’d always wanted to visit the islands, and when the job had come up in the Bahamas, John had volunteered quickly. No one told him it was going to be so bloody humid, he thought, though the irritation he felt was barely there; Nassau was beautiful.

John knew that every city, no matter how beautiful, had a seedy underbelly, had crime and problems; hell, he was coming to be a part of that seedy underbelly. It didn’t change the fact that the brightly colored buildings, the palm trees and the blindingly-bright sky were, as a whole, rather lovely.

John checked into his hotel—he didn’t have time to find a flat just yet; he figured he’d poke around after he’d found his footing—and then strolled out into the early evening, in search of something that he couldn’t quite name.

Walking for awhile, he made mental notes of places he’d likely need to know; markets, launderettes, cafes. After an hour or so, he found himself in front of a pub called the Walrus, traditionally English-looking, with dark wood and the pub’s name in faded lettering like it had once been part of a boat.

John had lived more than half his twenty-eight years in England, and he was in no hurry to go back, though he’d always been fond of their pubs. Cozy, with sticky floors and good beer, and very few trendy twats to ruin a quiet evening.

Being born in Lisbon, John was no stranger to beautiful beaches and beautiful people, palm trees and spiky ferns. Being here in Nassau felt a lot like being in his mother’s country. Perhaps that was why he felt so instantly at ease.

He pushed open the door to the Walrus and stepped inside, his eyes adjusting to the dim lamplight as he took in his surroundings. Dark wood, and a lot of it—there were only a few patrons, sipping pints and chatting about the weather, about football scores. John slid into a stool at the bar and waited for the bartender to return.

He wasn’t waiting long.

The man who appeared behind the bar was—familiar? John knew he was staring, but his brain was doing acrobatics trying to figure out where he knew the man from. He was tallish, with broad shoulders and pinkish skin, absolutely covered in freckles. He had a ginger beard.

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

John startled a little at the other man’s words. His voice was gruff and low, and a teasing smirk pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“I’m almost certain you don’t,” John replied, attempting to find his usual casual air, “but for some reason, I feel like we must have met before.”

The bartender’s smirk widened, and he looked down at his hands where they rested atop the bar, scant inches from John’s.

John couldn’t help staring at those hands, feeling the oddest sense of deja vu; he recognized them, mad as it sounded. He knew those square nails, those long fingers. He knew the scar on the back of the left hand, just between the thumb and index finger.

“Maybe you ought to have a drink, then,” the bartender said with a smile. “While you’re waiting for it to come to you.”

John nodded, ordered a pint, and sat there trying not to stare dumbly at the man he couldn’t possibly know.

I’d remember him, he thought, licking his lips unconsciously. I couldn’t forget someone like that.

John sipped his beer and pretended not to be watching the bartender as he chatted to other patrons, made drinks, wiped down the counter.

He watched the way the man’s forearms flexed as he cleaned glasses, studied the lines of his face and the angle of his jaw. When his pint was nearly empty, the bartender came back to stand in front of him.

“Figure out whether or not you know me yet?” he asked, teasing again.

John ran a nervous hand through the unruly mop of dark curls on his head and grinned.

“Regrettably, I can’t seem to place you,” he said with a shrug. “I suppose maybe my subconscious is indulging in wishful thinking.”

The bartender snorted, raising a sun-lightened brow.

“We could always introduce ourselves,” he said to John, “see if the names ring any bells.”

He stuck his hand out, and John took it, hesitantly at first.

“John Silver,” John said, trying not to get flustered by the greenness of the bartender’s eyes or the impossible attractiveness of his freckles. He was, he thought, long past the days of being flustered by attractive persons.

“James,” the bartender replied, smiling with teeth. “McGraw.”

John was momentarily stunned by the flood of images flashing, one after another, across his mind. He saw the bright sea, the glint of gold coins; a ship, a black flag, and this bartender in a blue coat, a pistol at his hip.

Blinking rapidly, John felt suddenly, oddly aware of himself in a way he had never before done. He also realized he was still holding on to the bartender’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” John said, shaking his head with a grin. “I just had a vision of you as a pirate captain, which I suspect means that the jet lag is starting. Long flight, you know.”

The bartender—James—laughed softly, and the effect smiling had on his features was dizzying.

“Perhaps in another life,” he said, eyes glinting even in the low light.

 

 . .

  
Two nights later, when John had slept off his jet lag and met with his new employers, James took John home after he closed the bar.

  
They fucked with a heat and passion that neither one could recall with previous partners. When it was done, they laid in a sweaty, tired heap atop rumpled bedsheets.

  
James rolled over onto his side to look at John, reaching out to trace the muscle of his shoulder.

  
“I still can’t help feeling like we’ve done this before,” he said softly into the darkness. “Which is shit,” he added. “As if I’d forget doing this, and with someone like you.”

  
John smiled in the dark room, shivering under James’ light touches.

  
“Perhaps in another life, then.” he said cheekily, and then reached for the man beside him.

  
  
Yes, perhaps in another life. 

  
  


Fin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's finally over! 
> 
> This is a shorter chapter than I've given you previously, but I feel that the characters are done with their adventure, and I've said all I can. 
> 
> I am so happy that so many of you have stuck by me for this whole fic, and here we are at the end! <3 
> 
> Let me know what you think :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Should Live in Salt - Manips](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6215545) by [avalonlights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avalonlights/pseuds/avalonlights)




End file.
